Summers' Moon
by DarKade
Summary: Sequel to Summer's Twilight. As Buffy finds the family she so longed for in the open arms of The Olympic Coven, Alice is plagued by apocalyptic visions. The Hellmouth has awoken- and Buffy is not the only Slayer to answer its call.
1. Prologue

Prologue

I'd never given much thought to how I would die. I mean, I had planned to see Europe, marry Christian Slater, then die.

I guess two out of three ain't bad.

There was a time, I was utterly convinced vampires where going to kill me. Because I was The Slayer. The one girl in all the world who could defeat the vampires.

The irony of it all isn't lost on me.

Now I stare across the room into dark empty eyes. Eyes that reflect me. The eyes of a hunter. Her lip twists in a sick parody of a smile.

And the woman I loved was going to die if I didn't break my vow.

I brought up my fists.

The hunter smiled in that friendly way as she sauntered forward to kill me.

**Notes from The Author**:

This is book 2 of **The Summers' Twilight Saga.**

Yeah, you really need to read book 1 to know what the heck is going on. But I am not the boss of you, do what you like, just don't break Volturi law.

Content Warnings:

**Graphic sex **and **violence**.

**Major**** character death**.

**Suicide** discussed.

**Terminal Illness **discussed.

**Realistic depictions of mental health facilities.**

**Animals Harmed.**

Yeah, quite a romance story when you spell it out like that. *shrugs* I am a weirdo being horny on main, bite me.

Well, are you ready to go to Sunnydale?

Enjoy x


	2. Buffy

Chapter 1

Buffy

Who am I?

Well, there is no simple answer to that question.

On paper, my name is Elizabeth Anne Swan, but everyone calls me Buffy. I was born in the remote town of Forks, Washington State, to the police chief Charlie Swan and his then wife Joyce, who would abandon him and flee to her dream life in the sun.

In California my mother remarried, and to all who knew me then, I was Buffy Summers.

I guess if you read my high school, police and hospital records, they would paint a picture of a good girl gone bad. A popular girl, homecoming queen and cheerleader who at the age of sixteen fell from grace becoming an anti-social, violent delinquent. A tragic decline leading to arson, to arrest and to institutionalization.

If you were to read my final letter, you would see an insane girl abandoning her family and her girlfriend, because of shame.

If you were to look for that girl, you would see she crossed into Canada in 1997 and then vanished without a trace.

There is so much I could tell you.

I could tell you that underneath all of that lies a story of strange magics and demonic forces. Of a girl chosen to bear a mystical legacy; a duty to save mankind from monsters.

A girl who failed that duty and became a monster herself.

I could tell you so much more. Of my travels, of my obsession with a girl, of my crimes, of my death.

But I will just tell you the one thing you need to know about me right now.

I am a vampire.

And unless I can fight the blood lust raging in me...

I will kill you.


	3. Belong

Chapter 2

Belong

Becoming an immortal had taken the world from me and reshaped it beyond recognition.

Nothing in Forks had changed.

_Everything_ in Forks had changed.

My eyes saw further, sharper, broader and with such clarity that had I still been able to make tears, I would weep from the unfathomable beauty. Every raindrop a rainbow, every leaf an intricate patchwork of veins and glassy hairs.

How my mind could even process this all was beyond me, but it could. I felt more awake than I had ever before.

And beyond my senses, lay the transformed meanings. The grey, ever present cloud layer that hung over Forks had once depressed me, filled me with a sense of gloom and claustrophobia. Now it was my kind and gentle protector, a blessed shield from the migraine inducing, skin searing direct sun.

The rain that fell now upon me was warm and beautiful. Dampening the noise of the world with a steady thrum and filling me with a sense of cleanliness, of renewal.

Those magical raindrops now clung to the short, spikey black hair of Alice Cullen, tracing down her beautiful features, passed over the lips that where my undeserved heaven. She smiled at me like I was hers. And I just couldn't understand how she could love me so very deeply.

How could I ever be worthy of such a thing?

…

As we passed through the great door into The Cullen home, I half expected to be struck by a hot wall of thickening air as I crossed the threshold- a final mocking barrier excluding me from all that I wanted.

"Buffy? Are you okay?" She said.

"Yeah. Just nervous I guess." I replied.

"Don't be. They are all excited to meet you properly." She said, giving me a gentle, warm kiss. "You're amazing Buffy."

I swallowed and tried to somehow nod away my anxiety.

She led me through to the high ceilinged main chamber of the house. The entire three story back wall was glass, and it shimmered like diamonds in the rain. My jaw dropped open.

"Alice! Welcome home!" Esme exclaimed as she gracefully came forward to embrace her daughter. Behind, I could see Jessica giving a warm hug to Carlisle and Edward chatting to Emmett playfully.

Esme turned to look at me, her honey golden eyes raking over the creature that I had become. She gasped and put her hand up to her mouth. She shook her head in something like wonder.

"Oh, Buffy, you look absolutely breathtaking." She said, and stepped forward, hesitantly. I guess she wondered where we currently stood. We hadn't parted on the best of terms.

Thankfully, Alice bridged the gap, stepping close and proudly looping her arm through mine.

"Doesn't she just? Worth the wait."

"Oh… it does my heart so good. You.. you do make such an adorable couple. Buffy, sincerely, welcome to our family."

She extended a hand. The awkwardness felt ridiculous to me now.

"C'mere." I opened my arms to her.

If Esme's hugs where fantastic before, they took on a new level of enthusiasm now that she didn't have to worry about crushing the mortal life out of me. I went from awkward to completely relaxed in seconds. And I am pretty sure she wasn't using her gift on me.

Okay, little nesting bird Buffy. Be right back.

_Ahhhhh_.

Carlisle chuckled when I finally surfaced. Seriously, how did he ever get anything done married to a woman with such epic levels of affection?

I noticed Rosalie loitering behind Emmett, she seemed to be sulking. I guess the last time we met she had physically tried to attack me. Bridges didn't need to be mended, but entirely constructed from scratch. I gave a minimal wave of acknowledgment with my fingers.

"Jessica Stanley, Buffy Swan," Carlisle said stepping forward and holding his hands together reverently. "It is my honour and delight to officially welcome you as members of The Olympic Coven, and officially recognize you both as members of House Cullen. As is tradition, if you so accept, please say 'Of Cullen, I am.'"

Jessica smiled at Edward.

"Of Cullen, I am."

I looked at the people around me. Esme, Carlisle, Edward, Emmett, Rosalie, Jessica and finally my beloved Alice. I felt my heart soaring at the idea of it all. I had family. I finally had family. I felt those strange, vampiric ghost tears come to my eyes, and squeezed Alice' hand.

I took a shuddering breath.

"Of Cullen, I am."

...

I was beginning to understand The Cullen's alien way of sitting in the school cafeteria. I had no need to rest, or sit, or lean or shift my weight from one foot to another. When I caught myself standing bolt upright, I tried to take up a relaxed posture. But it required concentration.

Jessica cut through that by sitting on the couch and draping herself casually over Edward. She seemed far more at ease here than I. I guess I had only been in this place twice. And okay… one of those times was with the intention of, possibly, maybe, slaying them.

I felt horribly awkward now. Caught in a sort of limbo between guilt and wanting.

I wanted to fit in, to be accepted, to find home here among them, but I couldn't shake the feeling I didn't really belong.

Yes, I had once been The Slayer, their natural enemy (or so we all had been misled to believe), but I was a vampire now. Like them. Alice's mate, and childe. I was of Cullen. Right?

Why couldn't I allow that to sink in?

Alice noticed my anxiety and taking a seat, patted the space beside her. I felt a little better as I curled into her side. At least my arms had something to do now.

"We have much to discuss." Carlisle said. "But I am sure you would all like to unwind and perhaps hunt after your journey, so if I may I will just cover the most important things.

"Buffy and Jessica, you are now bound to the treaty between our family and the Quilute people. Edward and Alice, would you please go over the boundary lines with your mates and hunt with them until they are confident. Remember, the entirety of La Push reserve is forbidden to you now. I ask you to keep the treaty at all costs.

"I will call the elders this afternoon and let them know you have joined us."

"Do, they have to know our names?" I said, uncomfortably.

"Not initially. But I try to keep things on a personal level with them. The more they see us as individuals with names and loves, and relationships, the less they may see us as as monsters of legend.

"Oh."

"What is your concern there Buffy?"

"She was sticking her tongue in a dog" Rosalie said.

"Rosalie, please." Esme said.

"Well, it's true, right Buffy?"

I looked at Alice, feeling ashamed somehow. I don't know why, I was single when I asked Leah out. And human. I had no idea about the politics at the time. Alice knew of our relationship. At the time it had broken her heart.

"Carlisle, I dated a Quileute called Leah Clearwater. She is shape changer, one of The Wolfpack."

"So? What?" Rosalie said. "Your ex pet gonna be pissed that she has to go back to dry humping trees?"

"Rosalie that is quite enough!" Esme said "Come with me."

She marched out through the back door. When Rosalie hovered, a withering gaze was issued, and the tall blonde growled and stormed after her mother.

"Sorry Buffy, that wasn't cool." Emmett said.

"I… I am sorry if my past relationship is gonna cause tension for your family." I said.

"Your family Buffy. You are part of it now." Carlisle said. "I will leave your name out, if you think it best."

"I… I really am sorry." I said.

"Perhaps you and Leah could arrange to talk things through at some point if you think it will help."

"I don't know. She is pretty hot headed and stubborn. Plus I kinda just ghosted her. That has to sting."

"Well, an issue for later, perhaps."

"Leah was the mystery girlfriend?" Jessica said. "Oh my god, I totally sent you to her studio. Buffy, you sly dog. Ooops, no pun intended."

"Alice, is there a like a deep, deep hole somewhere on the property I like, can jump in and never leave?"

Edward burst out laughing at something.

"He does that." Jessica shrugged.

"I am okay you used to date Leah." Alice says, breezily. "I mean, that wet dog smell washed out eventually. "

"A deep hole. A deeeeep, deep hole."

"Moving onto the next important item, what would be the best way to handle your father, Buffy."

"Oh." I said. My funk became thicker. Alice slid her arm around me.

"If it's okay Carlisle, the last few days have been really intense for Buffy. Maybe she could have some time to think about that. If I may, I would like to settle Buffy and I into the cottage."

"Of course."

Esme and Rosalie appeared again, the latter looking sheepish.

"M'sorrybuffy" she said.

"Me too. Maybe we can hang out at some stage and talk?" I offered. She nodded curtly. _Oh yeah, a biiiiig bridge required._

"Oh Alice, Buffy, before you go, I have a gift for Buffy and Jessica." Esme said. She gestured to two small black velvet boxes sitting on the table.

"I have had these for, well, well over fifty years now. I always hoped Alice and Edward would find mates. It felt like there where just two gaps in our family. I couldn't help myself, I had them made in preparation."

Jessica and I took the boxes and gave curious glances to each other. She opened hers first and gasped at what was inside. She looked choked up.

I carefully lifted the box and slid back the cover. Inside, laying on black velvet was a black glass oval with ornate silver trim that held a beautifully worked silver coat of arms.

"A symbol of your membership to our family." Esme Said. "The lion represents strength and ferocity. The hand is faith and sincerity, showing our loyalty to each other. The trefoil at the bottom is perpetuity."

"Thank you Esme" Jessica said, hugging her.

"Thank you. It's beautiful", I said. "I hope I can prove worthy to wear this."

"Buffy, you already have." Esme said and hugged me. "two more amazing daughters! I feel blessed."

"Now, come on, let's raid my wardrobe and go settle into the cottage." Alice said, with a wink.

"And I *really* need to eat something." Jessica said with a grin.

"Oh yeah, you need to hunt." Edward said, looking at her eyes.

I didn't.


	4. In Her Heart

Chapter 3

In Her Heart

"My mom warned me never to let strange yet attractive vampire girls lead me off into the woods." I said as Alice and I made our way up the path.

"She's got a point Buffy. You should probably turn back. You have no idea what dastardly fate awaits you."

It was midday and the bastard sun was being cruel to me once more, but at least I had the trees to save me. I skulked behind Alice, keeping my head turned to the darkness.

"Bit late. Geddit? 'Bit'. Ahem.".

"Do your puns always get worse before you are about to get the best sex of your life, or are you just nervous?"

"Fine. Maybe a little nervous." I confessed. "And besides, the best sex of my life literally ended my life. You should know, you were there. This would be the best sex of my unlife."

"You're anxious. You wanna talk about it? Edward can't hear us from this range."

"I guess I am just adjusting. I mean, one minute I am in Italy, alive and then boom! Back in Forks. No jet lag. Hell, I haven't slept in- what- three days? Never gonna do that again, apparently. And everything has changed so, so much, and now I am a vampire and I am back here… and Charlie… and, Alice, I am a _freakin_' _vampire_! And… and… and…"

Alice pulled me up short and took both my hands. She looked at me until I finally met her eyes.

"Buffy. I need you to do something for me. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Good. I want you to scream. Really, really long and loud. Get it out of your system, run around, whatever it takes. But get it out."

"I'm a mess, aren't I?"

"Not usually. But your anxiety is contagious. And I have been waiting to take you to this cottage and get you naked and… and… I wanted it perfect and you have been all I can think about for years and now it's just about to come true and… and… and..."

"Alice." I said. "Breathe."

"We don't need to breathe, Buffy."

"And that… that is another thing freaking me out." I stop breathing then to prove my point, looking around, gesturing at the absurdity of it. Nope. Nothing. See?

"You goof." She chuckled. "Okay, maybe I am stressing too. I want this to be perfect. You and me."

"It's you and me, Alice. How can it not be?"

She smiled at this thought and looped her arm through mine, pulling me closer. But I couldn't let her go unteased so...

"So hey, where's my 'ooooh, trust me I see the future' confidence girl gone?" I said.

"In case you hadn't noticed, I haven't had a vision in days. Not while I am close to you. I think your power blocks it."

"Oh." I said. "I… kinda mess things up for everyone don't I?"

"Or maybe it's just a slow week. We don't know yet. oh, and whilst we are on the subject of nerves, what is with _you_? Where's my kick ass confident Slayer girl gone?"

"I dunno. Maybe all that got passed onto the next girl. Great, now my destiny is to be a needy anxious lesbian vampire."

Alice laughed and pulled me close, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

"Okay, you wanna know what I foresee for us, Slayer girl?"

"M'kay, what?"

"I see… just up over that there hill, looking out over a beautiful lake with a waterfall, we will find the most beautiful little cottage. I foresee that it is snug, modern, luxurious and most importantly, very secluded and very private. And aaaaaaall ours. For as long as we want. Just you and me. Concentrate Buffy. Are you getting a vision of what that is going to be like?"

I smile. Oh yeah. I have a visual.

"Okay, well, add to that the fact we never get tired, we never need to sleep, we don't chafe and we don't need to breathe."

"Oh." I said. "Ohhhh!"

Alice gave me an adorable lopsided smile that tweaked her elfish nose to the side. I booped it with my finger and walked on.

"Well, what the hell we stood here for? Future girl? Onwards! To the future!"

…

The cottage was everything Alice promised and more. I instantly fell in love with it, and the view? Oh god, the view!

It nestled in the hills just-so, beneath the merciful shade of great overhanging trees. One side comprised of a spacious wooden balcony with chairs that looked out over a lake far below. I could see snow on the mountains beyond, so I knew, in theory, I should be cold, but of course I didn't feel it. I mean, I was aware of it, but there wasn't any discomfort connected at all.

Sure, the whole design of the cottage smacked of what rich designers thought a quaint cottage should look like, but sue me if I didn't care about the lack of authenticity. It charmed the hell outta me.

The main room off the balcony had a huge open mouthed fireplace that reminded me a bit of a pizza oven I saw in Volterra. Utterly impractical, of course, but I didn't care, a roaring fire would set the ambience later. Alice gave me a knowing grin.

The next room was the bedroom, which housed a huge, sturdy four poster bed. An ensuite bathroom lay beyond. No kitchen or toilet, I noticed. Huh.

"Nice place." I said, playfully swinging on one of the bed posts. "So… ms.Cullen, what on earth should we do to pass the time? Hmmm? Play go fish? Watch a movie? Charades? Wait... I am never gonna be able to beat you at card games am I? "

"Nope" she said, popping the 'p'.

Alice, places herself along the arc of my swing to intercept my lips with a kiss.

"Well, Ms. Swan, after that flight, I was thinking a long, hot shower together."

"Do we even feel hot water?"

"I wasn't talking about the water temperature." She purred.

Next thing I knew, I was kissing her neck, working my way slowly up to her jaw. Alice's fingers slid under my top, grazing along my ribs. I lifted my arms and let her slide my top off. More clothing followed, cleverly leaving a trail of garments for us to find our way back to the bed later through this vast maze of two rooms.

The shower was like none I had seen before; more a small room than a cubicle. Alice touched a sleek black panel and the water started to tumble down from three wide shower heads.

I guided her into the stream, kissing her still. No need to breathe indeed, the kiss grew and deepened as the shimmering liquid fell, engulfing us.

Hot water or not, I was growing warm against Alice, our bodies slipping together in a delicious way.

The last time we made love, I had been a human. Her skin had been chill against mine, welcome against the fire of my own lust and the hot Volterra air. But now, oh now, we were the same heat. Our flesh the same.

There was no fear now. No need to control our urges, because the only urge here was our desire for one another. I felt myself thrown back against the marble wall and felt it crack. I pulled her into me, pulling her onto my knee, delighting at the moan that issued from her lips.

I wanted more. I wanted to give her more. My hands worked her hips, guiding her against my thigh. Alice's movements became freer, bolder, greedier. A string of her sweet groans muffled by our kiss came forth, then one of my own as her hand slid down to give me pleasure too.

I tapped my hand against the panel, cutting the water off.

"What's wrong?" She said.

"Nothing. I just… can we have our first time like this on the bed? It feels like a better way to start this. A proper way."

Looping her arms casually around my shoulders, Alice sighed contentedly and nodded.

"That would be better. I agree. I just had to wash the flight away. Shall we?"

It was a simple gesture, but there was something just so meaningful in the way we toweled each other down. She was telling me how much she would care for me, how much she desired me and treasured my body. I felt myself growing all the more relaxed and all the more aroused. She placed a hot kiss to my lips and leaned to my ear.

"Come to bed, Buffy Swan, of House Cullen." She said, her voice a lusty whisper.

I let myself be drawn into the bedroom, she stood me before the bed, gazing into my eyes.

"I love you B-"

The sound of glass shattering startled me.

I turned just in time to see the projectile strike Alice in the chest. Her pale skin shattering, with deep silver fissures emanating from the wicked black shaft driven deep into her heart. She fell hard back against the post of the bed with a sickening crack.

I felt the second bolt hit before I saw it. Cracking my spine in a horrific metallic grind, sending pain blasting through me.

I roared as I fell over Alice, my legs silent to my commands. Despite the agony, my instinct was to protect my sire, I threw my arms over her, guarding her chest with my body. I could see the crossbow bold lodged in her heart, I ripped it out, feeling a flash of joy that it was fibreglass not wood. I could do this… I just had to reach behind and…

No! Something was happening. Something was…

Alice was convulsing, a thick black foam at her lips.

_Oh god. Oh god please no._

I felt myself falling, back and back into darkness.


	5. Irkalla

Chapter 4

Irkalla

I became vaguely aware of my surroundings as the litter I was lying on scraped against a heavy door. Someone in scrubs pulled it aside and once again I felt the eerie feeling of falling forward feet first as they pushed me along.

My hair about my face stank of burnt plastic and wood, my hands stinging from cuts and burns. I tried to move them, but the handcuffs bit into my wrists.

I felt the chemical swim try to take me away again and fought back, gritting my teeth and growling.

"Elizabeth, can you hear me?" A voice said.

"Alice," I croaked, my voice slurred and hoarse. "Alice." I swallowed, rolling my tongue about the acrid taste in my mouth trying to draw forward saliva.

"Alice!" I yelled, my throat complained and I was wracked with coughs.

"Elizabeth, lay back, you are okay."

The litter lurched to a halt and I coughed again, vomiting. I felt something wiping at my face.

"Alice. What have you done to her! Alice!"

"I can't get a vein, can you hold her still please?" A woman's voice said. I felt a crushing weight on my arm and winced.

"Jesus, keep her still Karl. I nearly got stabbed." The voice said.

I roared and ripped my other hand free, feeling the dull thunk-pop as the handcuffs snapped at the joint. I weakly smashed my fist down onto whoever was grabbing me.

"No, no, no, no you don't missy." I felt something press into me hard, then it gave an agonizing kick, like my muscles trying to punch me from inside. I rolled into a ball as best I could, my feet and other hand still cuffed, and let out a silent scream before sobbing at the pain, I could feel hot tears on my face.

_What the hell_?

"A taser? Are you serious? For fuck sake, back off! We are trying to stabilize her."

"And she's trying to kill you. Little fucking psycho." A man said, his voice thick with a New York accent.

"Officer, you need to step back and let us work."

"Your funeral lady." The man said.

I used my free hand to wipe at my eyes, trying to open them. When I did, the light drilled into me.

"Where's… Alice…" I said in a breathy sob. "Please… what is… going on."

"Elizabeth you are safe" the woman's voice came, I could make out her face vaguely through my stinging eyes, deep caramel skin black hair, all a blur. "he is gone now, just try to stay calm, and breathe normally. Okay? You are in hospital. We are trying to help, but we need you to calm down for us so no one gets hurt can you do that for me honey? Just take breaths."

"I… don't need to breathe." I chuckled at the idea, "I can't cry."

"Now honey, you are dehydrated, I am just putting a line into you so we can get some fluids into you, okay? Your gonna feel a pinch." The woman said.

"You're in danger. Get away from me. I can't stop… Karin. Your blood. Oh god please, get away from me! Get away! I will kill you! I will kill you all! Alice!"

"For Christ's sake. That's it." the cop said.

I felt the snap and kick as he hit me with taser again. Everything went black.

…

I woke to a familiar heavy haze. Familiar too, was the sound of the thick plastic safety blanket crinkling as I shifted on the cot. As was the vivid smell of stale cigarettes and cleaning fluid.

I tried to rise but my body wasn't ready yet. I felt like a human photograph, laying in developer fluid, floating, coming slowly through in a chemical bath. My hands were icy cold against my hot face, my palm wiping me slowly back into being.

Time rolled over me. I finally got my feet to the linoleum floor, groaning long and low.

I knew this place. The door, the table the bed. The rounded corners on everything and safety hooks that would click and release to prevent self harm. I knew this place well. I was in a ward cell in high observation.

But how?

I placed my little finger to my lips and bit down into it. The iron tang of blood on my tongue was bitter and unpleasant. I watched the tear in my pale pink finger ooze red.

"Okay, the arrow. I am poisoned. This is a delusion." I said, watching the blood trickle down to the base of my finger. There was no blood lust, no death deep urge to lick it all up.

I stood, pressing my bare feet into the cold feintly gritty floor, and moved to the door. The observation window in it had safety glass, and ventilation holes. I could easily see the familiar six door corridor and the hexagonal glass nurses observation station beyond.

I tried the door and was surprised it was unlocked. As I stepped out, a nurse came from the empty room to the left of mine. She was in her mid twenties, with warm bronze hair and a soft, caring smile.

"Good morning Buffy" she said in her familliar thick irish accent. "I was just going to see if you were awake. I saved your breakfast tray, but I may need to reheat it."

"Uh… thanks Sara." I said. This was vivid, and so very vivid at that. I could even a faint hint smell Sara's perfume. Lily of the Valley, lemon, Jasmine. I leant forward and sniffed her. This made her suitably uncomfortable, but didn't draw away.

"Secrète Datura" I said. She smiled.

"Wow, yeah." She said. "my husband got it for me for my birthday."

"Suits you." I said numbly, touching the crackled varnish of the doorframe.

"Go sit down and eat, I will be over to do your readings in a sec, okay Buffy?"

"Guess so. But I need to be ready when I wake up. I am gonna make them hurt for what they did to Alice."

Sara seemed a little disturbed by this, or disappointed, it was always hard to read her face. But I trusted her to always be kind.

The food on the tray had my name and diet slip stapled to the lid. Hyper metabolism. Oh yeah, I remember staff watching me eat and use the bathroom because my bodyweight dropped dramatically. They thought that I was starving myself, or forcing myself to vomit. But they eventually finally believed mom that it was just me- I needed to eat pretty much three times as much as a normal girl. Oh, and the tests that followed. Uhg.

Sara was right, the food was cold. But my belly was a void, so I prised off the sweaty lid and I scooped up some of the rubbery mass of scrambled eggs onto the soft plastic fork.

This was food?

I pictured a golden cup on a hot italian night, as distant lightning silently set the sky in purple hues. I remember that cup, filled with the sweet, savory, thick, impossibly delicious life blood.

I let the egg slab drop back down to the tray. I settled with the chocolate milk carton, but though it smelt sweet, it was like drinking water.

"Not hungry Buffy? That's a first." Sara said as she wheeled up the monitor trolly. I numbly lifted my arm as she wrapped the rubber cuff around it. "I told you it needed microwaving."

"How long have I been here Sara?"

"I can check if you like. I have been here ten months Tuesday, so at least that."

"It was just three months in my memory." I said. "This has changed."

Sara glanced worryingly at me, before setting to work taking my blood pressure and heart rate.

She handed me a paper cup of pills and I swallowed them without thinking. I felt it was pointless to go against this dream, either I would wake up soon or be dead. Either way, Alice was in pain, and suffering.

I felt rage building in me.

As Sara wheeled the trolley away, I made my way over to the kitchenette and poured a cup of hot water. I grabbed fists full of coffee and sugar sachets and tore them all up into the cup. The resulting syrup was dark and bitter smelling.

As I choked it back, my body gagged, but I willed it silent as I took it all down my gullet. It tasted of nothing, it wasn't sweet enough, strong enough. I tried thinking of blood. But it wasn't. I jammed my bleeding finger into my mouth too, but it just made it all the more wrong.

I wanted the caffeine to kick me awake, but it didn't.

"You can't kill yourself with coffee, Buffy" said Alice. She was sitting on the exercise bike, arms casually draped over the bars. She wore I suspected was once a bright pink, sparkly unicorn tshirt from Japan. But it was now a sad remnant, greying, stained and grimly faded. Her slack blue tracksuit pants clashed.

I rushed to hug her but she shied away, pushing her arms up to stop me.

"Nurse Vanth is watching us." She growled at me through clenched teeth "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Alice! What is happening, how are you here?"

"You losing it again Summers?" She said with a thick Mississippi accent.

"Your eyes are brown. Alice..."

"Just take it down a notch or sixty Buffy- Vanth will bounce you into seclusion." She said, glancing nervously back into the observation station. She gave a fake chuckle and touched my arm like I had made a joke. "Come on, let's go to the garden."

It wasn't really a garden, just an open roofed area with astro turf, a couple of benches, pot plants and the best soothing wall paintings the local high school artists could manage. I wanted to fix the wonky eyes on the girl on the beach so much it made my knuckles go white.

Alice sat me down and stroked my arm soothingly. Only then was I aware I was wearing a faded Hemry high shirt and loose tracksuit pants. I could smell the faint traces of urine and sweat on my clothes.

"Is it bad?" She said.

"Alice, we are both dying out there. An ambush. We got shot by something, a crossbow maybe… not wood... it was poisoned."

"Where were we?" She said, her deep brown eyes looked at me with fascination.

"The cottage, on the estate. You don't remember?"

"Of course. With the great big shower for two and the four poster?"

My heart jumped for joy.

"You do remember!"

"I like this one. Tell me," she whispered, "What were we doing?" She looked over my shoulder to the nurses station before she leaned in, her face flushed, her smile mischievous. "What were you doing to me?

"I… uh... Alice?" I whimpered.

I felt tears choking at my throat. Her brown eyes looked at me so differently. Distantly, like I was some curiosity. Some entertainment.

"Were we both vampires again? Or was one of us the mighty Slayer this time? Oooh, where we both werewolves?" She whispered. "You know how much I love the one where we both fuck as werewolves."

It occured to me then that I wasn't waking up. I was never waking up.

Nausea took me and I vomited a thick black sludge onto the potted foliage. The feel of it made me wretch harder. I was on my knees, fingers in the dirt and cigarette butts from the upturned plants.

"Nurse? Buffy just puked!" Alice yelled.

This was the worst place I have ever known. And the woman I loved and wanted above all others was there with me- but she didn't love me. She wasn't my Alice. She was my torture.

I was being tortured.

That's how I knew I was never waking up.

Because this was hell.


	6. The Resulting Bloodbath

Chapter 5

The Resulting Bloodbath

"So, your delusions have changed?"

"They're not delusions. I died. Again. This is hell. You know this." I said, drumming my chewed nails on the formica table.

The registrar or whoever-the-fuck-he-was glanced up from his clip board. Behind him, a young neatly dressed Indian woman with short hair sat watching me, taking even more notes. An orderly was behind me, your usual varsity gorilla, by the door.

"Why do you think this is hell?" The man said.

The interview room was thin and echoed my words, with a stupidly blue feature wall and a pot plant I wanted to slam against it. The chairs needed a good smashing too. Everything did. I sat at the cheap shitty table and picked at the cracked edge with my index finger.

"What else could it be? I have been here for six days now. Six whole days. I was watching the clock, you know. I can count."

"But why hell? Why not in the care ward?"

"Because… Dra til helvete Drittsekk" I chuckled darkly, "Stikk å dra deg!"

"Could you speak in English please Buffy, it makes my notes easier."

I laughed and let my head fall back, looking at a copper stain on the ceiling.

"Helvete. 'Helvete' means hell." I say with a giggle. "In Norwegian. I know this is hell because I can swear at you in Norwegian."

I cup my hands to my mouth and shout. "Dra til Helvete!"

"Why do you feel you deserve hell, Buffy?"

That stopped me acting out. I folded my arms across my breasts and looked to the floor. My neck twitches hard, jerking my head to the side.

"You know why. Why make me say it?" I sigh.

"I don't think burning down a gym is a sin. A crime? Yes. Dangerous? Definitely. But not a sin. Those boys you assaulted, the bike you stole… is that hell worthy?"

"I hate how everything is stuck at this point in my timeline. If you are gonna punish me, you know what it is I should be punished for. Or is that part of it? The torture? Just letting me stew on it myself? You know what I did! You know it!"

"Buffy, is there something else you feel you have done, something you would like us to know?"

"You know!" I cried, sobbing. "You know what I did. You know." My arms felt impossibly heavy, I let them slip to the table as my body trembled. "I... killed her. I killed Karin. Oh god, I am so sorry."

"Buffy, Who is Karin?"

My head jerked hard. I pulled my cold fingers to my face, it felt moist and hot.

"Karin Cronquist. I tore her throat out. I did it. Diana was right about me. I am. I am."

"Are you saying you murdered someone called Karin Cronquist?"

"I did."

"Where is Karin?"

"In Volterra." I say. "She'd have killed again by now."

A silence fell on the room.

"Buffy, are you human, right now?"

"No. Not any more."

…

I was sat in the common area that night when it happened.

It was cold and dark in the ward, the only lights where those tracing the skirting boards, the silent television playing some infomercial and the yellow light from the nurses station.

I was heavily medicated, which was a strange mercy. Time was kinder in those moments.

I thought of Alice, out there… not the one I could see in her room, diagonally across from my table, laying on her bed. My Alice. My future seer, my lover, the woman I had died for. I wondered if she had a Buffy in her hell too.

I closed my eyes.

…

I was walking through a high school I did not recognise. The night was warm, like any typical night in my Californian life.

A girl was walking along beside me, perhaps unaware of me. She wore tight black leather clothes and boots, her pale flesh framed in red silks. Her hair was like silk too, a long smooth bob, shoulder length on one side, just above her ear on the other in rich copper with black streaks.

Upon the exposed ear she wore an elaborate peice of jewellery, part cuff, part peircing.

It was shaped like a skeletal dragon, it's spine was jointed like a chain, circling over the edge of her pinnea. As it reached her earlobe, the tail threaded through the flesh as a piercing. In the dragon's mouth, a glass globe. The centrepeice was an eight pointed sun with three stars that was pinned through her tragus. It was fascinating to me, as much a thing of sinister beauty as the girl who wore it.

She glanced at me with a sly, syrupy smile as she reached a double doorway. Her green eye makeup exaggerating the violent red of her pupils. Her lips were dark and inviting.

"Mmmmm" she purred, leaning into me, I felt myself become aroused. "You can feel it too, can't you?"

Her hand raised, she stroked the air around my face and neck, then drew it back, her long sharp fingers following an invisible path towards the door.

We approached, and pushed through into what appeared to be the school library. The stacks where broken and tipped all about, the books spilled everywhere. Moonlight streamed through an overhead window down to a deep, wide hole ripped through the floor.

She beckoned me to the edge. I felt helpless to resist. Deep below I felt it's presence, huge, immense, inescapable, waiting down deep for me. Calling to my darkness.

She pulled me close by my throat, placing a hot, sticky kiss on my mouth. I felt her tongue snake across mine. Slowly she drew back, and the dark smile returned.

"The Hellmouth is thirsty." She says.

She slashes my throat wide open and I lose balance, pitching forward.

I scream as I am devoured by the dark.

…

Everything is changing as I wake. The ward is in motion, the wall shifting, the cupboards rolling back, the blue trim lights bleeding like liquid across the floor. I glance up to see Alice, laying on her bed, she is gasping, her body arching up in agony.

I try to run to her side but I am floating up, my legs levelling, pulling me into the air into a lying position, I glide towards Alice, my hand reaching for hers.

I can smell fir trees and varnish, and blood, sweet merciful blood. I am not cold. I feel warm.

Alice.

The ward shatters in metallic cracks, which start to mend and melt together, and the image it leaves behind is of Alice lying naked beside me on the four poster bed in the cottage.

There is blood everywhere and my body comes alive. The scent pulsing through me. I claw myself upright to get at it, but a strong hand pushes me back.

No!

Blood!

Give me the blood!

I growl and try to tear away the arm, but I am too weak. It holds me.

"Esme, Alice is waking too, hold her!"

Carlisle has me, holding me down as I come to my senses. Esme has Alice, holding her daughter tightly as she growls ferociously to be free.

I hear sobbing, and turn to see Edward crouching over a blood soaked Jessica, her mouth oozing crimson with the very thing I need. I want.

"Let me in Buffy!" Esme cries.

"I can't!"

"Please!"

I want the blood, oh god, everything hurts! I need it! I want…

I turn my eyes to Alice. I snatch her hand to mine. Try to regulate my breathing. Alice needs me. I need Alice.

The calm begins to wash over me is Esme's doing, I know. I breathe slow if only for something to focus on.

And it passes.

"What the hell happened?" I ask Carlisle.

"You were poisoned. Irkalla. To knock you both out."

"The blood."

"The men who did this where human. Jessica caught their scent."

I look back to see Edward scoop up my blood drenched sister and carry her into the shower room.

I could see from her expression that Jessica was lost in something close to heaven.

Alice pulled me into her arms.

"Oh Buffy, you're real. Thank god you're real." She said, her voice tortured and distant. She then turned to Carlisle and said one word that sent a chill through me.

"Hellmouth."


	7. Dig Two Graves

Chapter 6

Dig Two Graves

The deer stood no chance against Alice or I as individuals, but together? It was dead before it hit the forest floor.

I tore into its throat, burying my face in the hot flesh, gorging myself, working my head deeper and deeper as I drew in the life essence. I could feel the force of Alice' bite and the counter pressure of her sucking deeply in the stream and beat that fed me. I groaned in pleasure, and felt the rumble of her reply through the gore.

I slipped back, releasing my clawed hands from the beast, sliding back in a drunken stupor. I felt my broken, aching body renewed, my mind clearing. In the blood was my renewal.

Alice tossed the carcass aside and crawled to my side. Her face bloody from the bridge of her nose down. She grinned impishly, and started to lick the blood from my face with broad laps.

"Sorry Bambi" I groaned. Alice chuckled and returned to licking the blood from me. I kissed her, working my tongue against hers.

"You're a messy eater." She said, falling against me in the ferns. "Where you this messy as a human?"

"Shhhh, your harshing my fuzz buzz." I smiled, and gripped her chin, licking her clean in the same way she did me. "Is it weird that I don't find this weird?"

"Weird is relative. We basically just went out for a venison dinner. Add some candlelight and apply some heat to… Bambi there and, well, this way is just quicker s'all".

"I wondered if it would feel, you know, natural. But I get it."

"You're just a natural." She pecked my lips and fell back at my side. I looked down at the mess I had made.

"I ruined this outfit."

"Oh damn, we have to go clothes shopping. What a chore!"

I chuckled. Yeah, Alice and I were a match made in heaven. I glanced back down at the blood. Well, maybe not heaven.

We lay still, staring up at the grey blanket of sky as it slowly rolled past the trees. The ferns about us stilled. I could feel Alice's hand on mine.

"Where did you go?" I said, quietly.

"In the Irkalla?" She said, "The Asylum, in Biloxi. You?"

"Mental Health Ward. California. So… I guess the same. You were there."

"You too. But it wasn't really you, was it?"

"Yeah." I sighed, turning to curl against her side and press a kiss to her bloody cheek. She pulled me closer and rested her chin on my head.

"Are we vampires dreaming of being mad girls or mad girls dreaming of being vampires?" I said.

"In my… in that place, in Irkalla, I saw things. Remembered things." Alice sad.

"What sort of things?"

"You were right. My name was Mary Alice Brandon. After you told me of your vision, I did some research. I was from Biloxi, Mississippi. Born in 1901. You found me. Thank you."

Alice shifted to look back at the sky.

"I was a foreseer before my folks had me committed. I had a sister. The electric shock therapy broke the memories apart. That's why I couldn't remember properly.

"In the Irkalla… those memory fragments came together.

"There was a vampire hunting me, torturing me, driving me more insane than I already was. Angelus wanted that. I was his pet project."

"Angelus?"

"The vampire with the face of an Angel. A real sadistic prick with a kink for seers. His childe Drusilla was just like me. He drove her mad and turned her. He planned to do the same to me. Make her a sister."

"The old man turned you instead."

"Yes." She said. "He saved me. Angelus was furious and they fought. Drusilla freed me. Told me "off you pop, little miss Edith. Before Daddy comes back to crack your mind wide.".

This last bit she did in an English accent, it sounded to me like a Dickens character.

"Miss Edith?"

"Yeah." She chuckles. Then her face falls and she goes quiet. I stroke her cheek, marvelling as the last stains of blood soak into the white marble flesh and vanish.

"You saved me too, Alice." I said. "I had my very own Angelus in Aro."

She smiled and sighed. The clouds where darkening overhead. I could smell rain in the distance.

"Guess we have a whole lot more in common than I thought."

"Guess so."

"Hey. We got out. We found each other. That's all that matters." I say. "Well, that and clothes shopping."

Alice pulled me into a kiss.

A few hours later Carlisle had the bodies removed and Esme had cleaned up much of the carnage, if not removing the stains, then soaking enough sugar soap and vinegar into it to render the smell unappealing.

I was on the deck, staring down at the remaining possessions of our attackers.

Even washed, the clothes and equipment of the two who attacked us smelled strongly of blood. With some effort I managed to push down the urge to… well, to allow me to just look.

Rosalie appeared at my side in a blur.

"Emmett and I found no one else on the property. I did find a makeshift shelter that reeked of them. There where food cans, some empty, some full. I am guessing they have been here around eight days."

She stalked around behind me, looking at the equipment laid out of the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"Telling a story." I said. "What do you see?"

"Karma." She said, her lip twitching. I looked at her and grinned.

"Can't argue there. They hurt Alice. They are lucky it was Jessica who got to them before I did."

I could tell that remark impressed Rosalie, though she hid her reaction quickly.

"Okay. Tell me a story." She said.

"I am going on a hunting trip with my brother. One change of clothes. Camouflage. But food for more than a week? We take brand new crossbows tipped with a poison specifically for Vampires. But neither my brother or I pack stakes, silver blades, crosses, holy water or garlic… any of the usual vampire hunting gear. So we either don't know what we are hunting, or are stupidly confident. But the thing we do pack is a set of extremely strong restraints- ankles, wrists, collar with a connecting line. Just one. So we are here to catch, not kill. So not confident, not stupid… my boss was being careful they we didn't kill any of the vampires."

"That's quite a story." Rosalie said. "Edward said their thoughts were in German, they sounded professional, trained. One was called Hans."

"German called Hans, eh? Well, that rounds it down." I said.

"They were here for one vampire." Rosalie said, glaring at me. "I can only guess who."

"Eight days ago I wasn't a vampire."

"That leaves Alice, Edward or Carlisle."

"Because they have gifts. Aro seems to like collect gifts."

"Never by force. Always subtler means." Rosalie walked around the pile, looking carefully. She squatted by the rather sophisticated trackers and headset. "Well funded. Watcher's Council?"

"Ooh surprise twist? Turns out, The Watcher's Council work for The Volturi. And well funded? If they are, it never trickled down to me or my Watchers, that's for sure."

"A splinter group within the Volturi?"

"Maybe." I sigh and step back away from the pile, taking a breath from the incoming breeze. "How is everyone doing? Is Jessica okay?"

"She's shaken up. Edward is a bit too."

"Obviously. But what about the rest of the family?"

Rosalie gave me a curious look. Perhaps she was struggling with the concept I actually cared. I wasn't sure.

"Esme is worried we will have to relocate, she loves it here. She has been waiting a long time to come home. Emmett is angry with himself that he didn't detect them sooner. Carlisle is worrying about the politics that could be at work. He is holed up in his study."

"And you?"

"Honestly?"

"Best way to be. Don't hold back, I take it you aren't worried about hurting my feelings."

"Buffy, why the hell are you here?"

"I am Alice's." I shrug. "Simple as that."

"Why?" She said.

"Still working on that question myself. But I know everything I have done, what I am, it was for her."

"Why throw everything away? Your life. Your humanity? Your chance to be a mother and lead a normal life?"

"I was a Slayer, Rosalie. I was never going to get to have that normal life you speak of. No children, no picket fence. You know the average age a Slayer dies? I was par for course.

This way? I got to choose how I died, what my death meant. And I got to escape my calling. Start over."

Rosalie looked sad.

"I am guessing you never got that choice." I say, softly. "I am sorry."

Rosalie nodded.

"No, it is I who should apologise. I just, I understood why Jessica chose to be this. I just… I never thought about you as anything but a regular girl throwing her life away."

"Yeah, well, when Esme convinced me I was actually a regular girl, my decision would have been different. I mean it, Rosalie, it sucks you never got the choice."

"Thanks." She said. "But I got my revenge."

"I once knew a woman who told me it wasn't as good as the films make out."

"Revenge? Maybe for her. So help me, I loved every goddamn second of it."

"Well" I looked down at the gear at my feet "with any luck, I will find out for myself."


	8. I Can Hear You

Chapter 7

I Can Hear You

I found Jessica at the main house. She was sitting cross legged tinkering with what I assumed was some kind of folding computer. She had large headphones on, and she bit her lip in concentration.

She had a change of clothes which, like those she wore in Volterra, where modern and tailored. Clearly whilst I had been away Alice had been at work on her. I approved, her clothes now gave her a sophisticated, offbeat, artsy look that perfectly suited this version of the girl. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, and I noticed she already wore her Cullen Crest on a leather cuff on her wrist, like Emmett and Edward.

Speaking of whom, Edward glanced up at me from his seat on the couch behind her, and nodded. He put down his book, stroked Jessica on the shoulder, planted a kiss upon her head, and made his way up the spiral stair.

I sat down on the floor in front of her. She slipped off her earphones and gave me an easy smile.

"Hey you." I said.

"Hey." She said.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Teaching myself some software. It's for making music. You?"

"Checking in with my shiny new sister. Alice restyled you too, I see."

"Your honey restyles anything and everything that moves around here. You know she got mad at me for wearing the same outfit twice?"

"Sounds about right." I chuckled. "I expect Mr. Gordo will be in Armani next time I see him."

She chuckled and then fell silent. Dumbo was back in the house, and this time he had fangs.

Jessica shifted, pushing the computer thingy to the side and sliding her legs over my lap. I adjusted to accommodate her. She slipped my hand into hers.

I loved how comfortable she was at expressing her emotions physically with me. Though in hindsight, our first, awkward sexual manifestations of this shared longing to touch was an important moment in me figuring out who I was, this level of intimacy felt like a better fit between us. She liked to speak with touches as much as I.

"So. We're, like, vampires now. What's up with that?" She chuckled. I picked up the little hint of darkness in that statement.

"Alice and I just drank a deer like a milkshake." Edging closer to what I wanted to talk about.

"Poor Bambi." she said.

"That's what I said."

"How was it?" She said, looking down at my hand as she massaged it.

"Not as good." I confessed. I turned her hand over to look at her leather cuff. I brought my other hand over hers and rubbed the back with my thumb.

"Well, next time I will be sure to try the veal." She said, more to herself than I.

"You saved Alice's life. And mine. Thank-you sister." I brought her fingers to my lips before returning to my massaging.

Jessica seemed cheered by this notion. She put her head onto my shoulder and watched me working gently the muscles on her tense fingers.

"What happened, when I was in Italy?"

Jessica let out a long sigh.

"I found out I was sick. Real sick. Like, I had eight months tops kinda sick. I couldn't really talk about with anyone. You had vanished. I just kinda shut down after that, stopped talking.

"Then, there was an accident in town. A logging truck lost control. It ploughed into the cafe."

"Oh Jessica." I kissed her hands again, she had mine in a vice like grip.

"So I guess, after my mom's funeral, I was all alone, and I just had had enough. I went up to the cliffs at La Push. Well, you get the idea."

"Edward saved you?"

"Yeah. He was the only one who could hear me throughout. The only one listening."

"I am sorry I wasn't there for you." I said.

"Nah, no need. I know you had your own thing going on there, now. The whole Slayer thing. Hey, young me, you legit frenchied a superhero." She said. I chuckled.

"Edward already loved me by that stage and he was determined to make what time I had left beautiful. We got close and I fell hopelessly in love with him. At my birthday party, I found out they were vampires the hard way. Papercut. Disaster. Anyway I freaked. Lost it. Said some stuff I regret. I ran. I mean… vampires?"

"Yeah, right there with you."

"Edward, my big byronesque lug, got all broody and decided he was a monster and went to the Volturi for a formal stake dinner."

"Alice found me, in Vancouver. We talked. One of those epic deep and meaningfuls that goes til sun up. And then she had a vision of her dumb brother."

"Lemme guess, two tickets to Italy, a stolen Porsche and I am all caught up?"

"Yeah. Alice helped me realize I wanted to go on. And I sure as hell wanted Edward to go on to. She showed me I had a choice."

"Smart choice."

"Really? 'cause three people are dead because of me." She said.

"Two had it coming." I said. "My score is two, and counting." Jessica seemed confused by this. "I turned a girl. Every person she kills is on me."

"Buffy. I liked it." She confessed, her vibrant red eyes sparkling at the memory. "I really, really liked it. What does that make me?"

I stroked her hand and didn't say anything. When I looked back, she was looking out towards the dark mountains beyond, the tips of her fangs peeking through the broad wolfish grin on her face.

...

Alice was at her drawing board when I entered her room. She had an adorable expression as she worked, her lip bite tugged her little nose to the side, and now and again her deep honey colored eyes fluttered shut as she reached for the images within.

She didn't look up as I entered, and I didn't want to distract her, so I went to her wardrobe and explored. I knew now that the majority of my eternity was this; finding ways to pass the endless constant that was time.

I slipped my clothes off and slid on a familiar grey dress. It was the one I had tried on that first night- the one that played a part in my sexual fantasies ever since. I pictured Alice standing behind me, her breath making the hairs on the back of my neck stand, making my nipples become sensitive against the fabric, making my mortal blood rush in my veins.

I looked at myself in the array of mirrors once more. How I had changed.

Gone was the ragged brown pixie haircut of then, replaced with a sleek, angular bob with blunt bangs. My hazel green eyes where now crimson, unblinking, sharp as razors. My skin was flawless, smooth, no moles or scars, even the tiny spots that would regularly break out around my lips where gone. The puppy fat of my teens stripped away, leaving an angular face with a proud nose and high cheekbones. With makeup I could perhaps pass for early 20s.

It was still incredible to me now that this was it. The face I would have forever. Well, I hoped the red pupils would fade to gold. No, I vowed it.

They would be gold.

"Do you see what I see now?" Alice said. She glided over to me with her ballerina grace. "Just how beautiful you are?"

I could feel her breath on my neck, which felt hot to me now. Alice's gaze was filled with longing, and this time I knew it wasn't bloodlust. I reached up to stroke her cheek. She pressed close and sighed, I could feel her rubbing against my back. I turned, and expressed my growing lust with a kiss.

"Edward says get a room!" Jessica yells from somewhere in the house.

"Wanna go for a walk in the moonlight?" I asked.

...

At midnight, the entire family was gathered in the living room. Jessica was curled around Edward on the couch next to Rosalie and Emmett. Esme and Carlisle stood behind us, arm in arm.

Alice had laid out six drawings on the large rectangular glass table. Despite me being able to draw very well by my peers' standards, my own two pictures looked infantile next to hers.

"I don't recognize the girl." Carlisle said looking at my drawing. "She isn't Volturi."

"I didn't see her among the guard." I said.

"Newborn?" Rosalie suggested.

"She felt powerful to me." I said. "The same sort of vibe I got off Jane. Perhaps stronger."

"Perhaps she is of a different house. Did you see anything like a crest?"

"Oh… ooh." I grab a pen and start to draw the elaborate earring as best I could.

"This." Carlisle said, "The sun had eight rays and three stars. Are you sure?"

I nodded.

"This is the crest of House Aurelius. An ancient line. But it was disbanded in the 1930s."

"Her clothes are modern." Alice said. "Tacky, but modern."

Carlisle looked concerned.

"Both Alice's visions and yours overlap regarding a hellmouth. Heinrich Joseph Nest, the last master of Aurelius was obsessed with finding them. He saw them as part of our legacy. Aurelian's worshiped The Old Ones."

"What's a hellmouth?" Esme said.

"Legendary gateways to a hell dimension beyond ours." He said. "In some of our origin legends, the first vampire was made when a being from a hellmouth bit a human but did not kill them. In some versions it was the last great demon, in others it was a pure vampire, which are either called Turok Han or Nosferatu."

"Well, all this coincidence is making me feel like these where visions, not part of a wild trip." I said. "Looks like House Orwellian is reforming."

"Aurelius." Alice corrected.

I looked at Alice's drawings. One was of a metal seal with a pentagram, goats head and what I would call Celtic… knotty things. just looking at it made me feel uneasy. Something at the fringes of my mind was whispering to me, I shuddered at its call.

Another of her drawings was of a three pointed symbol written in blood on the forehead of a powerful looking vampire with a broad neck. His proud face deformed, the brow wrinkled up like he was clay and someone had dragged down his face into a permanent scowl.

A third picture showed shattered glass or mirror upon a dirty floor, in the reflections I could make out a vampire wearing what looked to me like a black duster, his features hidden in shadows. In some peices he grinned menacingly, in others he looked tortured with woe.

All the rest of her drawings looked like these medieval artists pictures of hell I had once seen in a school book. Lots of naked people and demonic things getting all chompy and stabby with them, limbs being ripped off, the blood being poured into open mouths.

It made me salivate.


	9. Wild Things

Chapter 8

Wild Things

The sun was bleeding away the last of its light over the jagged mountains, and the passing rains had swept the last of the day's scents away.

I sat by the fireside in the main chamber of the house, passing the time with Alice's magazines. The crackle pop of the burning wood was soothing, and the heat strange upon my skin. My family sat about the room, reading or talking quietly. Rosalie and Emmett where draped over each other opposite me, she laid tender strokes to his neck and through his short curly hair as they read. Esme discussed her plans to refurbish the cottage with my Alice, who was making sketches for her. Edward was at the piano, playing something intricate and mellow. Jessica laid watching him like he was the most magical thing in all creation. Carlisle was reading some scarily thick, heavy tome, but just as casually and lightly as I read a trashy magazine.

I heard a swarm of distant birds take to the wing, migrating I guess. I caught their shadowy cloud cross the last of the dying light.

I tried to return to my magazine, but I couldn't focus on the words, because it was like something deeper and more powerful was talking to me loudly. I shifted to try and get comfy.

I was slowly being overtaken by need. I pulled my legs tighter as my juices began to trickle, but that little friction just made it worse. My mouth echoed my pussy, growing wetter, I felt the thick venom coating my slowly lengthening fangs. I took a deep breath in, trying to turn my focus back to the page, but I knew I was too far gone.

I was aware of feint, distant rustling from far out _there_. Of claws in the dirt. Little noses sniffing out air, scents hot with life.

I rubbed my legs together slowly, secretly enjoying the pressure between my legs. My tongue licked at the sweet venom on my teeth, the tips now needle sharp.

My eyes met Alice's across the room. She eventually noticed, and glared back at me with dark eyes. She knew what I was feeling. She placed down her sketchbook and said something I didn't catch to Esme, who smiled and touched her hand.

Then she stood, her eyes locked on mine as she turned and slowly made her way outside. I stood and followed her out into the night

…

Alice lead me to a clearing, her eyes never once leaving mine. As she walked backwards, she began to strip off her damp clothes, discarding each piece to the forest bed. I did the same, and as the rain broke over us and the thunder rumbled, we were both naked.

She was moving low now, her powerful muscles carrying her effortlessly as she stalked. I circled her, feeling the tips of ferns caress my breasts. My strong fingers clawed the detritus to carry me low, and I felt a growl low and deep in my chest. I drew close to her, her musky scent filling my nostrils. I could smell my own arousal over the tannin rich forest floor. Alice was on all fours now too, fingertips and toes, easing her body backwards, taking us deeper into the wild.

Her smile was filled with tiny fangs. Her eyes lusty, predatory. We moved together through the wilderness, silently closing in on that which we both wanted.

The boundary between the rainy floor and the river was blurring as we passed through, blending and melting into the water. I was inches from her now, burning inside, consumed by instinct.

I felt I was merging, expanding, becoming part of something ancient and vast. There was no I or Alice, no boundary between us. Just as there was no boundary between our hunger and the blood we now hunted. I don't remember the catch, or kill. I was barely aware of the furry beast I had in my arms, drawing deep gulps of blood into me, making it as part of me as I was of it. I was consumed as I consumed it. I tore at my prey with all of nature's ferocity, it's screams and my growls bleeding together as one.

As I came back to myself, as Buffy once again rose within this needful body, and those boundaries slowly formed again, I sensed Alice near. Her heat, the blood on her breath, those eyes pooling with desire.

Our bodies met somewhere, I could feel plants crushed to my back, caught glimpses of her naked flesh spattered with leaves and mud. I felt her tongue and her fingers entering my boundaries, pushing and driving and seeking. Felt the rain shake free of my hair as my body spasmed with my first orgasm. The blood on her lips tasted different, from her own kill, and I drank greedily from them as she worked herself against me. Our bodies tangling, writhing, taking. I orgasmed again, and again, each time harder and harder. And she was coming too, against me, our flesh hot, stained with plants, blood and soil, I sought her out with my tongue, driving her on, wanting her with me, taking her, claiming her. Mine.

I groaned hard and arched, my eyes rolling back like the very Earth beneath me, rolling and rolling through the stars. Our pleasure rolled too, as we turned and turned, coming again and again, losing sense of time and place. Without pulse or breath, without need to rest, without limit or completion, I was vaguely aware as we fucked of the darkness giving way to deep blues, of those blues to pale greys, and on and on, to warm oranges and falling once again into deep blues and the blurring white of stars like streaks above us.

Immortal beloved, my everything, my nature, my death and resurrection. I am yours.

**_Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh_**!!!!

We snap awake as the scent hit us, the forest about me falls into sharp focus, time shifts, everthing now clear and sharp and still. It was night time once more, a full moon overhead. Alice was on all fours, eyes sharp, sniffing for danger. I could sense it too, something like a splinter in my mind, nagging and immediate. I was awake and aware. Fear crept through my veins.

Alice was trembling too, she shook her head as if to wake herself. Her wide eyes met mine.

"Human." I said.

"No." She said. "Something else."

…

We found our ruined clothes and hurriedly dressed. Alice gripping my hand, we stalked through the forest up towards the north western ridge.

"Quileute boundary is that river." She whispers.

"Whatever it is, it's on our side." I whisper back. She nodded.

I shivered as I heard the wolf cry, loud and near. I looked over the river expecting to see the wolf pack hovering, but the sound was coming from wherever the scent was leading us.

I could hear a chain rattling and the floor being clawed by something heavy.

Alice and I crept to a rocky ledge, looking down to the source of the scent.

There was a small dome tent erected on our side of the river. It was bright blue with a fluorescent pink cap and silver panels. There was no fire set up, no other signs of life.

Alice signalled for me to stay back. I realised she was worried if there was a human about that I would be a danger. I didn't like the idea of leaving her, but did as I was told.

She stalked over to the tent, and unzipped the front. Inside I could see a heavy backpack, boots and clothes. Nothing else.

Alice glanced back at me and sniffed the air, clearly disliking what she smelled.

I watched as she circled about the camp, looking for our mystery camper.

It all happened so fast. She was approaching a tree, some ten feet from the tent, which had a sturdy chain around it, when I caught a slight jerking on the chain sawing against the bark. I leapt, intercepting Alice just as the creature lunged for her. We rolled, coming up into fighting stance close to the tent.

It growled ferociously and clawed the air between us with long talons.

"Wolf! You cross the boundary, why?" Alice growled. "you break the treaty!"

But this was not like the Quileute wolves I had seen, had run with. They where big and proud, with perfect coats and moon faces. Their eyes shone with intelligence.

This thing's eyes where blank, beastial, savage. It's face was naked, rat like and ruddy, with a long muzzle filled with savage yellow teeth. Long grey fur rippled as it jerked and strained at the heavy chains.

"That isn't a Quileute wolf." I said.

"Yeah. But what is it?"

"Chained up, thankfully." I said. I looked at the combination padlocks on the sturdy chains, the campsite and the clothes. I pointed up at the full, round moon.

"Uh Alice, I am no expert, but my best guess? That's a werewolf."


	10. Oz

Chapter 9

Oz

Daniel Osborne (19) was curled up on the floor, naked and asleep. His hair was ginger now, the long grey hair that covered his body had drawn slowly back into the flesh a little before dawn.

I tossed his passport back onto the pile of his belongings, and poured a cup of coffee from the stove I had set up out of pure boredom. Alice had left to warn the family and see what the best plan of action was regarding our tresspasser.

When I waved the mug under his nose, the boy startled awake. When he looked at my face his eyes went wide and clawed himself back up against the tree.

I sat, looking at him.

"You're a vampire." He said.

"And you're a werewolf. Think Frankenstein's Monster will be rocking up soon? I should probably make more coffee."

He looked about, confused or perhaps looking for an escape route.

"Why are you not killing me?" he said.

"Well, for starters, I am trying real hard to be a vegetarian. But I gotta be honest, you smell like a mix of wet dog and dead skunk. I would rather eat dirt. No offense."

"Believe me, none taken. Uh… Vegetarian?"

"Family in-joke. We just eat animals- strictly no humans." I say. "I am guessing the fact you chain yourself up during a full moon means that you don't like to eat people either."

"Yeah. But purely for moral reasons."

"Good. I assume you don't take sugar or milk since you don't have any packed. Here." I say, offering the coffee once again to the naked boy.

He took, cautiously.

"So, the sun is… kinda doing the whole... thing where it is 'up'." He said.

"Perks of being a vegetarian." I said. "Why are you here Daniel?"

"Oz. My friends call me Oz."

"Why are you here Daniel?"

"I came looking for a way to control the wolf. On my journeys I heard of a local tribe who had many legends regarding wolf shape shifters.

I came to see if it was true. I was hoping they maybe could, maybe give me some information. Do you know them?"

"I know if you ask them, they can't answer."

"Is this some zen koan type deal?"

"Not really. Look, I am in the whole 'can neither confirm or deny' sitch regarding The Quileute legends. But I can point you to someone who can take you to someone."

"That would actually be awesome. Anything is better than the whole lot of nothing I have so far."

"Look, there is an artist in town. A metalsmith. Her name is Leah Clearwater. Tell her Buffy sent you. Then tell her you need to talk to the old guy with the cool silk tie and the good coffee. That should do the trick. Then tell her you are a shapeshifter and you need help."

"That's… huh. Okay".

I count the important points out on my fingers. "Buffy. Old guy. Silk tie. Good coffee. Got it?"

"Yeah. Think she will help?"

"Honestly? She will probably try to kill you. But that's just Leah. She is kinda grumpy."

He gave a little 'huh' expression and sipped his coffee.

"But when you do see her, don't tell her I am here. Or what I am." I said, making little fangs with my fingers to clarify.

"And maybe tell her... you met me somewhere on your travels... and that I say 'hi'... and that I really am sorry. And it was magical and I will always treasure our time together. And... to move on... And."

"Okay." He said as he sipped his coffee. "Sounds to me like maybe you two need to sit down and talk through some stuff."

"Avoiding it." I sighed. "How do you know about… what I am?" I made the little fangs gesture again.

"My town is kinda overrun by vampires. It's like, its whole thing."

"Overrun? What do you mean?"

"They basically run the place. School had a pre-sundown curfew. Every day someone else would go missing. The cops are on their payroll. The mayor too. Vampires everywhere."

"How many?"

"I don't know. At least twenty, thirty, maybe more."

"How is that possible? What are they eating?"

"Us, mostly. Rumour is there is a factory too. Processes people from all over."

"Where?"

"Sunnydale. California." He says. I feel a twinge of terror.

_1630 Revello Drive_

_Sunnydale, CA _

"Oz, I think you need to come with me."

…

"Yeah, that's Willow Rosenberg" Oz said, looking at my drawing. "We went to high school together two years ago but she got turned early in her first year. She is one of The Master's favorites. Really dangerous. The vampires all fear her."

Oz looks around the room nervously. The family are all gathered around, standing in that awkward way of ours.

"Is that the correct nomenclature? Should I say 'undead American' or…"

"Vampire is fine Daniel, please continue." Carlisle said. "Who is The Master?"

"They just call him The Master." he said. "Never seen him."

Oz points at Alice's drawing.

"That's the guy from The Bronze Massacre in '97. That was the start of the trouble. I think his name was Luke. But he is dead. Dusted by the Whitehats." He says.

"Whitehats?" Rosalie says.

"The resistance. If you don't mind I don't want to talk about them."

"Understandable." Carlisle says. "And probably for the best. Please go on."

"I don't know who that is." He said pointing at the broken glass image.

"I do." Alice said. "That's Angelus." She leans into me, sliding her hands around me for comfort. I kiss her forehead and squeeze her tightly. If he is still around, I pray I get to meet him.

"So I gotta ask." Oz says. "What are you gonna do with this info. The town is in a bad way as it is."

"Carlisle, my mom Joyce moved to Sunnydale." I said. "We have to do something."

"Well, from what young Daniel here has told us, I would say House Aurelius is not only grossly violating Volturi law, they are raising an army of newborns."

"A declaration of war." I said bitterly, remembering Aro's invitation.

Carlisle nodded.

I sigh. "Why is it the words 'collateral' and 'damage' are floating through my head right now."

"Speaking of law." Rosalie said, jabbing her thumb towards Oz.

"Oz isn't human" I said. "He doesn't count, so long as he keeps his mouth shut." I met his look and gave him a forced little smile.

"Daniel, you have done the right thing in informing us. I hope we can help your town. Thank-you for your time." Carlisle said, offering his hand to Oz. The young man stands and shakes it. I turn to the family.

"Oz here wants to talk to the Quileute people about his… condition. Could someone maybe drive him into town to visit Leah Clearwater?"

"Of course, it would be my pleasure" Esme says warmly. "Do come this way, Daniel."

Oz turns to everyone, nods awkwardly and gives a little wave. Then he looks back at me.

"Buffy. Old man. Silk tie. Good coffee." He says.

"And Ixnay on the angfay." I add.

"Right. It was a pleasure meeting you all."

"Here, I'll bring your gear." Emmett says, lifting the huge backpack effortlessly and following them to the door.

I look back at the table. Rosalie has written beneath the pictures.

_Willow Rosenberg (2yo)_

_Luke (deceased)_

_Angelus (?)_

I growl at the latter.

Alice lets out a breath as the sound of Esme's mercedes starts up.

"Can we pleeeeease open some goddamn windows now".

…

An hour later I was sitting on the roof of the house, looking out over the lake.

Alice understood I needed some time alone, and I suspected she did too. She had her own demons to wrestle. Or Angels, as the case may be.

I could see her in the distance, sitting down by the lake, skimming stones.

I had managed to push Joyce and Charlie both into a compartment of my mind during my stay in Volterra. No, perhaps it was when I was penning the letter that would destroy them both. But that compartment was open in me now, like a Pandora's box.

As little as either could express their love for me in a way I deemed suitable, I knew they loved me.

They would have grieved. No, they would be grieving. Charlie would have hunted for me, heading into Canada on weekends again and again. Calling local authorities, organising searches. Did he think of me everytime he had to walk past my old red truck, sitting in the driveway?

And Joyce, alone and in a new town, hearing of her only daughter's disappearance. Fearing the worst. How does she cope with all the emptiness and guilt?

I had no idea what a stake into my heart would feel like, but I imagined it felt like this.

I had to agree with Carlisle about contacting the Volturi. As cruel as The Volturi are, they kept us secret, kept our numbers down. What Oz was describing in Sunnydale was a massacre- pure bedlam compared to the controlled evil of Volturi rule.

Besides, I thought that collaboration with the information Alice and myself had gained would perhaps go some way towards mending any strain my creation made between The Volturi and our coven.

I had two families to protect now.

Regardless, I needed to get Joyce out of Sunnydale. And do so without breaking Volturi law, or her heart any further.

…

"How do I do it?" I said as I approached Alice. "How do I get to be around humans like you do at school?"

Alice looked at me with a confused expression, that then hardened. She tossed the stones down and stood.

"You aren't going to Sunnydale." She said, firmly.

"What I have to do is see Charlie and Joyce. I have to say goodbye properly. Otherwise it is gonna eat me alive for the rest of my life."

"Buffy-"

"What Diana made me do... what I did to them, was cruel. They need closure. I need to give them closure."

"Buffy, you cannot reveal what we are. You will never age. You were always going to have to vanish."

"I need to say goodbye, Alice."

She set her jaw, but I could see her eyes take on that glossy look that was our closest thing to tears.

"It takes practice and time." she said.

"Well, we better get started" I said. "because there isn't much time. There are Voturi levels of shit heading for the Sunnydale fan."

"Promise me you won't do anything stupid."

"Alice, it's me we're talking about. Of course I am gonna do something stupid." I say with a grin.

Alice sighs.

"Okay, but I am booking an official "I told you so"." she said.

"Duely noted."


	11. Endymion

Chapter 10

Endymion

I sat in Carlisle's study and watched as he faxed the drawings to the Volturi. The last image dropped into the tray and there was an uncomfortably loud beep to signal it was done.

The Volturi now knew everything we did.

I could almost feel the distant rumblings of war, forces gathering and pieces moving across some great shadowy obsidian board.

Would they send in The Slayer first? And who was she? Was she even prepared? Had I just sent a young girl to her death in my place?

Carlisle had noticed my agitation. He was rather pensive too. I realised I had stopped breathing altogether for the last ten minutes. I drew in long breath out of habit.

"I feel… like I have been taken out of the game." I said.

"How so?"

"I was made a warrior. A weapon."

"And now you have no war."

"Alice said I could make amends for what I am, what I have done by doing good in the world. The only good I have ever done is fight vampires." I said. "Maybe I should have taken Aro up on joining The Volturi Guard."

"But then, you yourself would have to live off humans."

"I know. This is why my head is all full and achy." I groan. "It's one of those catchy, thingies."

"A Catch 22?"

"Mmmrrrrrggg." I groan. My head pressed to the padding of the writing desk. "I wanted this. More than anything. Why can't I let it go?"

"Being The Slayer?"

"I did my time. I earned this. Didn't I?"

"Undoubtedly. Do you wish you were still the Slayer?" he said.

"No." I said.

"So your discomfort, perhaps you feel a conflict in your loyalties?"

"My loyalty is to Alice." I said without hesitation. "It's guilt. I feel guilty. For not acting. For letting this all just happen to innocent people."

"You helped those people Buffy. The Volturi Guard will bring Aurelius back into line in Sunnydale. Many human lives will be spared as a result of you, Buffy."

"But after that, vampires will still feed on people. Just... less people. It's a numbers game. I feel like I am playing god with their lives."

"Our moral stance against the harm of humans is a tenuous one among vampire society. Vampires must kill humans to survive. We choose not to. But our survival depends on all vampires being hidden from humans. In so doing we do indeed harbour killers and condone murder by not acting."

"You're basically saying I have to turn my back on those people. Otherwise we all die."

"What is important to you?"

"Alice. My mom, Charlie, and now The Coven." I said. "A good, stylish pair of everyday shoes."

Charlie smiled at my quip.

"I am glad my daughter topped your list. So the most important thing in the world to you is Alice"

"Yep."

"Alice is a vampire."

"I get your point."

"Do you regret becoming a vampire?"

I thought about the question for a moment, but a smile came to my lips.

"No." I said, "because I love Alice. And I get to be with her, completely and utterly. It makes me feel dead at even the idea of being without her. It's just something so immense and boundless I cannot get my head or heart around it yet. I don't think I ever will. I just love her, want her. No experience I had as a mortal brings me anywhere close to the joy I experience of being with her. This must sound horribly cheesy."

"Not at all. I feel the same way about Esme." he said, and I could see it in his smile. "And that never fades with time. A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

I smile.

"Buffy, you must know Alice loves you in the same way you describe as well." Carlisle says. "Over the decades I have known Alice, she would talk of you so often, so fondly and so vividly, it was like you were always part of this family. Just invisible."

"I was someone's invisible friend before I was born? Well that's trippy." I said.

"Buffy, you are an immortal. The harsh truth is, you are doomed to watch all your mortal friends and family age and die. The only lasting relationships in your long, long life, will be those you form with other immortals."

"So in the long run, my team is team bitey." I say. "I have to overlook my dear old friends tendency to murder people."

"It must have been simpler when we were all just the enemy." he said, a note of humour in his voice.

"Yeah, simpler maybe, but never true. Both Diana, my watcher, and Aro told me the Slayer and the Watcher's Council are puppets of The Volturi. So I was always helping vampires survive by thinning out the weak and the troublemakers, acting as a sort of scary monster to help keep everyone hidden."

"Maturity is where you grow beyond black and white, and start seeing the world in shades of grey."

"So my eyes are now open but I cannot act." I said. "How do you deal with turning your back on it all Carlisle?"

"I help the people where I can. I save the ones I can. I influence and fund development of treatments worldwide, help people lead better lives." he said.

"That just means you tend the sheep." I said bitterly, then I wave away the comment. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for."

"Buffy, you are a noble, selfless woman. A hero. But you have to draw a boundary somewhere, you have to say, 'this is the part of the world that I am responsible for. I will do my best within this space'. You can't stop all the evils of the world, can you?"

I sighed, and nodded. But I wasn't the hero I had been told I was. I wasn't the hero, period. I was the other thing.

"So start small?"

"Start with what is most important to you."

"Then, I can start by protecting my family properly. I already let the German brothers hurt Alice. I need to stop that happening again."

"What do you propose?"

"Their gear tells me they were not vampire hunters, or clued up on the whole vampire deal. But using Irkalla tells me whoever hired them was. So they were hired by someone to capture one of the coven. Someone who knows we live here. We need to find out who they worked for, what their motives are, and then I need to take steps to ensure it does not happen again."

Carlisle nodded.

"And if that meant killing a human?"

I crossed my arms and let that idea seep in. My bloodlust answered immediately, of course. But I tried to focus on the logical part of me. Turns out logic can be just as inhumane as hunger.

"Alice and the coven are my priority." I said. "My moral struggles must fall beneath that."

Outside I can hear the lighting rumble.

"Yes" I said. "If that is what it takes to keep us safe. Yes, I could kill a human. But I would prefer not to. I am comitted to being... Vegetarian."

Carlisle nodded.

"I mean, I would kill for a decent pair of everyday shoes too." I grinned.

"So what do you need to start?"

"Irkalla isnt something you can buy over the counter at a 7 11. We trace the Irkalla."

"I know just the girl."


	12. Grin and Bear It

Chapter 11

Grin and bear it

It was just a vial. Just a stupid, dumb plastic tube with a pointy ass and an idiotic lavender colored cap. Just a vial.

I hated it.

I crossed my legs and slid my hands down the wooden arm rests of the chair I sat in. Carlisle's office was nice. Gorgeous, antique wood, and old leather books, and... and... god damn it that lavender cap was so annoying. I looked back at the offending item, placed on the desk.

No, I didn't notice how thick the liquid was around that bubble, how deep the red, no, because I was reading the label. Yes. 30ml. Made in Taiwan. Very interesting. God damn, mother frakkinsassafrassinggggggrrrrgyeaaaahg!!!!!!

I snap my eyes shut and tighten my grip on the poor chair.

_Good afternoon Buffy, I will be your self restraint for today, on our specials menu with have a lovely juicy vial of…_

"How? How is this so hard?" I growl, looking up at the vial on the table. The stupid little thing looked back, having no right to look so sexy and delicious.

"Alice, please hit me really, really hard." I groan.

"Shush. You are doing great. Just concentrate on your muscles one by one." she said softly, flipping the page on her magazine. "Tell them to relax."

"Each of my muscles is telling you to go and get fuuuuuu….aaaaaaahhhhhgod it's looking at me funny."

"Buffy Anne Swan of House Cullen, look at me." She said, and after a few painful seconds, bless me, I did. "I love you, and I know you can do this. Trust me. I have seen it." She said, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

"It's not even open yet Alice." I whined. "This is difficult."

"And so are you." She smiled. "You are gonna be able to sit holding it calmly. Just four more weeks."

"Just stake me already." I growled. She planted a peck onto my head.

...

Edward and Jessica lay on the sofa together, her laptop resting on her knees. Edward smiled his lopsided smile as he listened to the playback on her headphones.

_You have stupid hair. It goes straight up._

_Tap tap tap… is this thing on?_

_La la la la la._

_Eddy boy._ _Raise the middle finger of your right hand if you can hear me._

_Jessica and I had sex once. I bet I was better than you will ever be._

I smiled and let my head fall back on Alice's shoulder. She nuzzled into me, her intoxicating scent filling me with comfort.

"I don't think he can hear me now." I said. "Privacy! At last!"

Edward looked up at me then.

"And I am enjoying one less inner monologue. You think about sex and clothes even more than Alice." Edward said. Jessica laughed, her bright, musical laugh and winked.

I didn't understand that part about their relationship. Sure, he was an old fashioned guy from a time that was, in my humble opinion, just god awfully misogynistic and stuffy, but Jessica wasn't. This whole waiting until they are married thing just messed with my brain. Still, she did get a gloriously shiny-shiny engagement ring out of the deal. Alice had been squeaking and squealing with excitement for days even before the engagement happened; she had already started planning the party. Such was the timeline my girl lived in.

"Isn't siring a mate pretty much like marriage anyway?" I said.

"Do you think we are married?" Alice asked, turning to look at me with a sweet expression on her face. I blushed as best I could, which these days was pretty much just a goofy grin.

"Well, I… don't know how this works." I said. "I mean, I think our feelings are pretty obvious to all, right?" My self confidence was falling. "Right?"

"You are my love." She smiled warmly, stroking my face, and said in her sweet crystal voice. "My mate, my companion, the one I want to spend Eternity with."

Okay, I was a little buttery puddle of Buffy by this stage.

"But, I haven't foreseen us getting married. Not yet. Besides… we have one glorious wedding to plan. Let's not steal their thunder." She went back to her magazine.

"Yet." she added.

"Wait, considering our catering needs, is our hens night gonna be a stag party?" I grinned.

"Well, having a stripper wouldn't be the vegetarian option." she muttered.

"I love you." I said.

...

Four weeks later Edward had made good on his promise to his sister. Alice's Porsche 911 Turbo in screaming yellow was delivered two days before our planned trip to Seattle.

We are hurtling down the freeway, somewhere in the early a.m, at a speed Alice _insisted_ was the speed limit, though the wicked twist of her lips after she said this was enough to cause me doubt.

"Fine… whatever, but can you at least stop lane hopping, I feel like I'm gonna barf."

"We can't vomit, Buffy." Alice said.

"Tell that to the bear trying to get gnaw it's way out of my poor belly" I groaned. "Don't make me drink another whole grizzly again."

"Black bear."

"Whatever. Point is I slosh. This is me, sloshing. Slosh-age isn't something I put into the good basket."

"Or Pic-ah-nic basket" Alice says with a sly grin.

"Hur hur Pixie stick" I fold my arms across my chest and sulk.

"Point is" she continues, "this is a business trip, not a dining experience."

"I get it. A hungry Buffy is a deadly Buffy."

"Speaking of business, why does Veronica want to meet us in person?"

"She doesn't. I do." I said. "I want to get a read on her. Face to face. I mean, if I am going to focus on coven security, I am gonna need info now and again. I need to know she is someone I can trust."

I reached out and lightly slid my hand over Alice's on the gear stick, interlocking our fingers.

"Besides, you kinda owe me a shopping date." I smile.

Alice's face lights up.

…

The hotel manager was waiting for us to arrive, and greeted Alice and I personally. To her credit, the woman exuded a very calm demeanor. But of course I could hear her heartbeat quickening, the scent of her fear was sweet notes behind her sour perfume.

"She knows." I whispered as she led us to the private elevator to the penthouse.

"The family business has long catered to our kind. I remember her when she was this high." She smiled, gesturing to her hip. "Adorable pigtails. Used to be a real menace up and down the halls."

Regardless of how full I was, I still took the precaution of placing Alice between The Manager and I in the elevator. I watched the golden numbers clack slowly as we rose, and let myself be still, hold my breath, relax.

Over the last month, Carlisle continued help me train my self control by bringing blood taken from his practice. I confess I failed much of the first week, but I persisted to the point I could sit still in the room with the lid unscrewed and actually read.

Alice, Edward, Emmett and Rosalie went to school, and Esme and Carlisle had their practices, so I found myself alone with Jessica most of the time. We used it to practice.

Jessica wasn't doing anywhere near as well as I with her blood lust. To my credit, I never got past lunging and snatching the vials, trembling as I fought to resist bringing them to my lips. Jessica had drank down several.

"Well, three of them where from my own bank donations" she had said. "So technically I was just recycling".

I knew I was ready to venture out. And I didn't… well, couldn't venture out in Forks- too small a town to cover up the magical reappearance of Chief Swan's missing daughter. No, seattle would give me a venue to experiment with my willpower.

I knew too that if I messed up in the city, not that I was planning to, but if I perhaps did slip up and bite someone, I couldn't be linked back to our coven. I had the small stake in my pocket purely for that outcome.

The elevator came to a smooth halt, and the manager walked us through to the penthouse foyer. At no stage did Alice sign anything.

"Your guest is waiting at the bar." The woman said. "Will that be all Ms. Cullen? Ms. Hale?"

"Thank you Gloria. That will be all."

She returned to the elevator and calmly pressed the button. But I could hear her sigh of relief even through the elevator doors.

I gave my own once she was safely on her way down.

...

Veronica was indeed sat at a secluded table on the balcony when we entered the bar.

Something about the way Veronica draped herself casually back on the chair reminded me of a silver screen actress. Her chin was held high, legs crossed just so, one arm resting on the back of the chair, the other nursing a martini.

Somehow Veronica managed this epic old school glamour whilst dressed like an art college drop out.

She was wearing faded black skinny jeans, a small denim jacket and a worn striped purple and black sweater. Her blonde dyed hair was spiralled up into two bunches on her head, a few strands framing her… and I gotta be honest here… absolutely incredibly beautiful chiseled features- hot dayum. The only jewelry she wore was a tight black choker. She had a brown satchel and a discman placed casually on the table.

As we approached, she turned away from her view of the sky needle and looked directly at us. Her eyes were striking blue, but this was a lie, because her poise and pearlescent white skin told me immediately that she was exactly like us.

She stood threw her arms wide to Alice. The hug was more of a short, patting affair, but it still ruffled me. Was there history there, or had I imagined it?

"Wow Alice, look at you, you haven't aged a day." She said with a knowing half grin. "How is the family? Growing, I see."

Veronica spoke in a machine gun patter, in what sounded like a Michigan accent. Her eyes fell on me again.

"Well look at you landing such a hottie." She said. "Hi, I am Veronica, you must be the infamous Buffy Summers."

"Infamous?"

"Not every day you get to meet The Slayer herself. Well, if you are lucky, ammirite?" She nudged my shoulder.

"So you know about me?"

"It's nothing personal, knowing about people is what I do." She shrugs. "Speaking of which... here is your buyer. I put it in this cool manilla folder I found just to look all spy movie and shit."

She pulled a thick folder out of her satchel and slid it to me.

Alice chuckled and waved the waiter down. She ordered something in French that I thoroughly didn't care about. I was too busy reading through the dossier, photos and transcripts.

"Alan Finch?" I said.

"Yep. Deputy Mayor of the fine town of… wait for it…"

"Sunnydale." I said. A moment later my eyes confirmed my hunch.

"I also managed to uncover… hold on…." Veronica pulled out a page and a flipped them to the top of the stack. "Eeeeeelectronic messages sent by Alan's office to a mercenary bulletin board, which were answered by the handler of this charming pair known as the Gruenstalher Twins."

"Frederick and Hans" I read aloud."

"Nice upstanding chaps, real menches. Wanted in Germany for capital murder, terrorism and the bombing of flight 1402 among other delights. Their target? This beautiful young farseer." She said, jabbing her thumb at Alice.

"I suspect the van with fake plates reported abandoned by your dad three weeks ago was theirs." Veronica sipped her Martini. To my amazement she swallowed it instead of sneakily spitting it back.

Alice glanced at the photos and then looked back at me. Her face was hard, lips pursed tight.

"Has Alan tried again?"

"No." She said, "Alan copped a stake to the sternum shortly before I started looking. His body was found dumped down by the docks. Reports in there."

"Found? So Alan wasn't one of us?"

"Nope. Mortal and, besides a boyfriend that he was absolutely sure his wife didn't know about (pssssst she did, and was about to take him to the cleaners on it) he was squeaky clean. Butter wouldn't melt.

"I looked into Sunnydale. Quite the party town. Highest rates in America of missing persons, animal attacks, PCP drug related gang violence, stolen bodies from the mortuary, grave desecration and… I am not making this up… the highest rate of fatal BBQ fork accidents. The cop reports are pretty much written in crayon."

"Well, I wouldn't book your ticket there just yet. The Volturi are now aware of what is going on. So Alan is out of the picture. Who pulled his strings?"

"Thought you might ask." Veronica grins as she sips her drink. "Please turn to page 8."

"Mayor Richard Wilkins III"

"Page 9" Veronice smiles.

"Mayor Richard Wilkins II"

"Page 10"

"Richard Wilkins, founder of Sunnydale, no less. Aaaaaand looking at the photos I take it he is one of us."

Veronica finger guns me.

"Lemme guess, Master of House Aurelius." I say.

"Really? Those guys? Wow. I haven't heard that name since… well, when did we meet?"

"New York 1928" Alice smiled. "As if you don't remember… 'Veronique'." she said in a French Accent. They shared enough of a knowing smile to really rub me up the wrong way. Words will be had later, oh yes.

"Aurelius is back? Well, I got sweet bupkis on Wilkin's origins or any connections to a vampire house. And I am good at this."

"Any idea what Dick here wants with Alice?"

"No prior contact, no familial ties, no business overlaps, no debts… I got no idea other than her gift."

"Thanks Veronica." Alice says. "Carlisle will wire you tonight."

"Noice. That's my grandson's kidney transplant paid for. By a 'mystery benefactor' of course." She winks.

"You know you can always ask Veronica."

"Nah, this way is more fun." Veronica smiles and finishes her drink.

I looked back at the smiling face of Mayor Richard Wilkins III.


	13. At First Sight

Chapter 12

At First Sight

The Seattle air was chill against my skin, this I could tell, but it didn't bother me in the least. Above us, the moon crisp and clear, half veiled by clouds. My new vision saw the moonlight in magical hues that made Alice's delicious skin shimmer. All about me the smells of the city where enticing me, teasing me, urging me to take to it's shadows and hunt.

And hunt we did, though, to fill a more mortal need in me.

"This is ridiculous. 'Shop til you drop' has lost all meaning." I said, as we carried our spoils back to the hotel. "It's been five hours and my feet aren't even sore."

"Now you understand my wardrobe space issues." Alice said.

"Which we just made… oooh, this much worse" I held up the many bags. "Props for restraint, babe."

"Hush now child, only two garments are mine. I promised you a new wardrobe in Volterra and if there is one thing you need to know about me, I always make good my promises."

"M'not complaining. My rich, gorgeous honey takes me on a fashion splurge that single handedly show as a spike on The Vancouver fashion industry sales charts for years to come? Who am I to complain?

"I mean, with the slight amendments for the part about my honey being a she, and that I would spend much of it trying to not eat the sales staff, this was my dream fantasy date."

"A she?"

"Much cluelessness about my sexuality abounded."

"I always just knew."

"Alice in a nutshell." I said. "Speaking of…"

"No. I never dated Veronica. I told you, I waited for you to come along."

"Can't help but notice the word 'dated' there so…"

"Are you asking if I slept with Veronica?"

"Again, wording. We don't 'sleep'". She chuckled at this.

"No, we haven't been intimate. She and I where close for a few years when I was new to all this."

"She looks at you like she wants to be."

"Oh, she propositioned me numerous times over the decades. Though I suspect mainly out of amusement after I made it clear it wouldn't work out."

"A vision?".

"Common sense." Alice said. "How could I enjoy another woman's affections when I only wanted you? It would be like drinking water in place of blood. That wouldn't be fair on her now, would it?"

"You always speak of me like you know me so well. It feels strange that I barely know you." I said. "Love at first sight is a romantic notion, but this is love at pre-sight- messes with my head."

"So, it wasn't love at first sight with me?"

"Honestly? It was in the canteen. And I was more focused on the lack of sharp wooden objects." I shrugged. "But, in the car park before the accident… when our eyes met, It impacted me. Hard."

"That was the truck."

"Shortly after, also true. But, I couldn't get you out of my head after that. Not sure that is love at first, or, well, second sight, but it definitely was… I definitely was deeply affected."

"Buffy… I…"

Alice stopped, her thoughts forming into words. I stopped too, and waited for her to continue.

"Buffy, I am in love with you, and that started well before we met. Love takes time, it grows. This… you and me, it's totally new. You don't have to be head over hills in love with me instantly. And… you have a choice here. Always know I want you, and love you. I hope… I know, that you can, you could, you may, love me as much."

"I love you. As best as I know love, I do."

"There sounds like there is a 'but' there."

"But… I am adjusting. Everything is different, the rules are totally different, the game is different. I guess I am just still spinning out."

"Time is on your side." She said, then nodded to the building ahead "This is us."

…

"What are you doing?" Alice said.

"Pretending to sleep. A deep, dreamless, happy sleep." I said.

"Why?"

"Because I am staying in the deluxe penthouse of a luxurious hotel on the finest sheets I have ever, ever, ever had the chance to lay upon, on what one could argue is the greatest bed ever made by mankind. And, such is my life, that this once in a lifetime sleeping experience happens to grace me after the point in my existence where I have absolutely no need, or ability, to sleep."

I roll over, and open my eyes to the woman of my obsession. Alice is propped up next to me on the hotel bed. Her face makes me draw in a breath just so I can sigh- Breath is for expression alone now.

Her hand feels so good on my naked belly, like it is radiating life. In a way it is.

I had dreamed of this trip for so long, and yet, I had found the whole experience was soured by the constant, nagging, festering worry that was Sunnydale.

At the boutiques, Alice would spin for me in an outfit and all I could feel was the dread fear of losing her. In every smiling attendant I thought of The Mayor's wolf smile. Could I cope if Alice was taken from me? It was maddening.

I hook my arm gently around her naked body; a tender anchor. She is here with me now, the evening air spiced with our sex. I ache at her gaze.

I am a thing of my two desires now. Of Blood and Alice.

"I had no memory of sleeping." she said. "Until the Irkalla. There I was human. I actually experienced sleep. I dreamed regular dreams." A smile flickered across her face, so beautiful I had to touch my fingers to it.

"What did you dream of?"

"Lots of stuff. Weird, disjointed stuff. Not like a vision at all. Things like… cotton reels, sand, a brand new Edison Disc Phonograph Cabinet. Cheese."

"Cheese? I loved cheese." I said. "I had nightmares so often, Slayer related stuff, either connecting me in with the girls of the past, or prophetic glimpses of horrors to come. My mom and her husband thought I was going mad. I guess in a way, I was."

"Sounds horrible." Alice says.

"It's bizarre, I hated my nightmares. But now I can't see them- well, that terrifies me more. What if I miss something important. What if I can't protect you?"

"Those dreams belong to The Slayer now."

"What if they are aiming her at you?"

Alice places a welcome, soothing hand to my face.

"Buffy, if she comes for us, I will know. I do see the future, you know."

"Not when you are close to me."

"There is something peaceful in knowing a vision isn't going to come screaming through my head when it isn't welcome. Remember the truck accident? And… and I can always just go for a walk and wait for one. Right?" She said.

From the strained tone of her voice I sensed she was understanding what I was thinking about. She placed her forehead against mine.

"You are going to Sunnydale, aren't you."

It was not a question, so I didn't answer it. What could I say? My world had shrank and shrank down and down until all that filled it was Alice and blood. And she was under direct threat. So that left just the other thing.

I got up from the bed and started dressing.

"And you won't let me come with you." She said. I wasn't sure if it was deduction, intuition or foresight.

"It is you they are after. I need them to stop. I need your eyes on the future to guide me- that means away from me. Someplace they don't know. Can you do that?"

"Yes. But I won't. I am going with you. If you go, I go." She said, getting dressed.

"Alice. Please. I need to do this. I…"

"Yes, your powers appear to block mine when you are near- but I don't need to be in another town- just far enough away. And wherever I go, they may be able to find me. They found me before and they had no way of knowing."

"Alice-"

"Zip it Swan. I am your Sire, you have no choice but to do my bidding."

"Are you… wait is that actually a thing? Are you being serious right now?"

"Clearly as you have zipped it." Alice sighed. "Guess that doesn't work on you either. How about 'your grounded'?"

"You know I have to protect you."

"And I have to protect you. There are other ways, smarter ways to handle this thing. We take the intel back to Carlisle and we all sit down and plan out a strategy together. Pool our gifts, let me get my visions back in order before you go off all half-cocked and get yourself killed out of pure impatience, you willful girl!"

Her glare trumped my pout. She was right, I knew she was right.

"Fine. But we go now." I said.

"Of course." She said, and with that, Alice kissed me.

...

The sun was peeking through the trees as we reached Forks, the light was pale grey and peach. Alice and I barely spoke as she drove, but her hand touched me now and again, grounding me, reminding me that she was there, that she cared.

I felt hopelessly agitated the whole way, made more frustrating as my hunger grew. It painted my thoughts of Sunnydale in ever deeper shades of red. Made my muscles jump and scrunch up, my fingers curls to fists or claws. I felt like a storm of knives.

But Alice's hand was upon my knee, soft ministrations, soothing my skin, working the muscles under graceful fingertips. I felt my bloody visions lift a little as she worked, and found it harder and harder to be a force of gory vengeance when those fingers started growing more, and more, and more intimate. As the need arose in me for satisfaction of the other kind, I felt a storm of conflicting desires rolling within my body, making me arch up in my seat, and paw at the leather.

I roared deep and lustily as her knowing fingers slipped into me, losing all thought of Sunnydale. She looked ahead, focusing on the road as she secretly pleasured me with deep and slow strokes. I shuddered hard once, and she slowed further, moving with me as I tried to seek out more pleasure with my hips, denying me, controlling me. I growled, feeling my fangs against my lips. Alice predicted my moves, keeping her fingers tantalizingly still inside me.

"Please… Alice… please."

"Not until your ready."

"Oh god, I am, I am… please." I said, thrusting forward, only to find her fingers shifting. It was like trying to fuck air. "Alice, pleaaaaase"

She smirked, accelerating the car, the roar of the engine rumbling through me, driving me back into the leather. The vibrations making my skin sing, my nerves sparkle and climb. My nipples ached to be touched, my tongue slick with venom, all I could think of was Alice inside of me. The car sped along, and for a moment I felt I was falling or flying or-

She thrust then, deep into me, curling to my most sensitive part, and I smashed headlong into full throttle orgasm, my cries at the engine pitch.

I shuddered and lurched forward as she pulled herself free from me. I folded up, shuddering as the vibrations alone sent me spiralling into my next climax, and then next.

If I could have blacked out, then seemed like the perfect moment. But to an immortal, it was like my world became a pinprick in the darkness but for a moment, before everything expanded and slowed down. Like time itself was climaxing.

As I slowly unfolded back into the now, I glanced over at my lover, at the smug little smile upon her lips. She didn't look at the wreck she had left me, she just kept on driving.

"I… fucking... love you." I gasped.

Alice grinned like she already knew. Because she did.

…

We arrived home shortly after. Fortunately, I had time to rearrange my clothes and fix my hair, because we had a visitor waiting for us.

On the step of the porch sat Jessica Edward and, to my surprise, that werewolf boy… Oz. The latter was playing a beaten up old guitar, but promptly stopped and put it down when we came into view.

"Fancy seeing you here" I said. "I take it Leah didn't kill you after all."

"It was touch and go." Oz said. "Look, I didn't want to intrude, but this is important. I really need to talk to you Buffy." Oz said. "Perhaps in private."

"We don't do secrets here, little doggy." Rosalie said curtly. I hadn't noticed her leaning across from the porch by the garage. She had the kind of stare she used to reserve for me on her face.

"It's about Leah." Oz said.

"Oh." I glanced at Rosalie, who scowled back. "Maybe some privacy may be a good idea."

I turned to Alice for confirmation, my expression apologetic. She gave me a little nod to show she was okay. I knew she wasn't- we would talk about whatever it was later.

"Thanks for playing for us Oz." Edward said. "Maybe again soon?"

"Jessica, you should record- your voice is amazing." Oz said, shaking Edward's hand. Jessica smiled, but kept her distance.

After the somewhat awkward pleasantries, I walked with Oz down towards the lake.

"So, what do we need to talk about?" I said.

"You need to talk to Leah."

"You told her."

"No. I promised you I wouldn't. But I gotta say, seeing what she is going through, it's real hard."

"What do you mean 'going through'? Is Leah okay?"

"She's… not doing so good. You really just need to talk to her."

"I dunno Oz, it's complicated..."

"It really is. Maybe more than you know." he said. "Do you know about imprinting?"

"Like with pets and their moms?"

"Kind of, but… well, see, the shape changers have this whole thing… part of the magic that makes them. It's like, they meet this one person, the one special person and like- pow… they form this deep, unbreakable bond. Like, love at first sight but cranked up to the max. They call it imprinting"

"It's okay, I get it. I am the ex. Look, if you and Leah are a thing, it's not my place…"

"She imprinted on you, Buffy."

"What?" I said, then "what with the what now?"

"Leah imprinted on you."

"Oh. Can't she just… oh." It felt like all the air in me left, taking with it a good chunk of my self esteem. "Unbreakable bond. How unbreakable are we talking?"

Oz looked down at the floor.

"Oh." I said. "Is… she gonna be okay?"

"She can't sleep, can't think, can't function, every instinct in her is screaming to look for you, protect you, be with you. They had to lock her up to stop her running off to find you."

"I belong to Alice." I said, catching the possessive nature of what I said. I swear I had meant to say 'With'. I wondered if that was part of the siring magics that made me. "And even if I… wasn't, I am a vampire Oz; Cold ones and Wolves are unmixy things, right?"

"That's kinda the point. What if her seeing you as a cold one breaks the bond?"

"Thats… I… uh, I mean that's a long shot."

"Any shot is better than just leaving her like this. Buffy, she's in hell."

Hell. I balled my fists up to my face in frustration, my hands felt strangely cold against my skin. That word sat in my head- hell. I thought of the Irkalla, and felt the sickening connection of memory to my own personal hell. How could I let her suffer anything like that?

"What if it breaks her?"

Oz said nothing.

"I… oh god this is hard, I need to discuss this with the coven. The treaty has to be respected, the Quileute elders involved too… what if she flips? She will need wolves watching her… this could spark a war between us."

"Yeah, it's pretty heavy." he said.

"Oz. Thank you. I am sorry to have put you in this position."

"Nah, it's cool. You had no idea." he said. "Leah's awesome- you gonna help her?"

"if I can." I said.

"Well. Okay then. Cool."

Oz nods by way of leave, slings his guitar onto his back and makes his way back to the house. I wait until he disappears from sight before I scream out my frustrations.

"fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-"


	14. Splinter

Chapter 13

Splinter

There is a moment- a mere few seconds, that my mind has kept hold of like a treasure. A little sliver of memory that I would return to again and again in Volterra whenever I reached that point in training when I was most exhausted and sore.

It was a simple few moments vivildy retained and it consisted of this: a wickedly cold night, a blazing fire, the excitement of the gathered Quileute people, the taste of coffee, deliciously sweet. It was the moment the elder had told us of the Quileute Slayer, of Death's Gift. It was the moment Leah had turned to me with such a look of awe and pride that I felt like I was really connected to my calling. Just for a moment, but in that moment, I was part of a legacy of legends. In her eyes I felt worthy.

In Volterra, Diana would train me hard, make me a true Slayer in physical sense, perhaps even the strongest of my kind to ever live, and yet no matter how deeply she thrust me into the role, I never felt that connection, that true worthiness again. Just a memory.

"What is it you think about?" Diana would say "when you summon that little reserve of power near the end? What is it?"

I never answered her.

_We are both monsters now. You and I._

It was that memory that came to me again and again as I thought about the situation with Leah, but this time it came just to mock me. The truth was that I felt sick to my stomach at the idea of seeing Leah again. For as much as she could burn with passion and pride, she could burn with a hate.

The way she looked at Alice with such utter contempt and violent revulsion? Well, I could imagine that look aimed at me, at what I was; what I had let myself become. Oz hoped it would break her spell. I knew it would shatter my last warm connection to my legacy.

No, the very idea of seeing Leah again made my insides claw themselves around in me. But what could I do? Whatever monster I was now, I couldn't abandon the girl. But if I couldn't see her, perhaps I could just speak to her, to ease her pain. That would be safer.

So I made my way back into the house. Alice was in the main chamber, as I entered, but she was happily engaged in showing Rosalie our new acquisitions. Neither of them noticed me as I made my way up the grand staircase and down the corridor towards Carlisle's office.

Jessica was laying on the floor of their room as I passed by, her head resting on Edwards belly, their fingers lazily entwined as they listened to music. He was facing away from me and her eyes were shut, I passed by them without notice.

The door to Carlisle's office was open. I slipped inside and closed it behind me as carefully as I could.

I punched the number into the phone but for the last digit. I tried to will away my nervousness, to breathe it out, to let deathly stillness claim me, but it was stubborn and resisted. In the end I hit the last button for fear Alice would come looking for me.

The dial tone nibbled at my brain. Click.

"Hello, Sue here."

"Uh… Mrs. Clearwater?" I said, awkwardly gasping in enough air to form the words. "I… hello. Sorry. Is Leah there?"

"Leah's... sick."

"It's me. Buffy."

"Buffy Swan?" Sue said, her voice suddenly weak and shaky.

"Yes."

"Oh my… we thought you were… oh, you have no idea how good it is to hear your voice. We were all so worried."

"Is Leah there?"

"Come home. Leah misses you. Your father too."

Charlie. I felt an ice cold twist in my gut. I shut my eyes and tried to focus.

"I… things are… can, can I just speak to Leah?"

"Come back." She said. "Just come back. She needs you. You have no idea."

"I… think I do. Mrs. Clearwater. She imprinted."

"How do you-? Then you know you must come back. You two are destined… she can't live without you."

"Mom?" Another voice came down the line, weak and distorted. "Is that?"

I heard footfalls, hard and heavy, before the phone clacked loudly enough to make me wince.

"Buffy?"

It was Leah. Her voice was raspy and high pitched.

"It's me." I said. She didn't say anything, but I heard a faint strangled sob. "It's Buffy."

"Buffy." She said, a mere breath, but it was almost rapturous. So much emotion crammed into my stupid little name.

"Leah, I am sorry. I am sorry I had to go."

"It is so good to hear your voice. Where are you?"

"I am... safe. But I am worried about you."

"Oh Buffy, you have no idea. I feel… I can't… are you coming back? Can you come back?"

"Leah, a lot has happened, and it's complicated. I don't think I can. Ever."

"I…" she drew in a breath, strangled and wet with emotion. "I… No… it's… can I come to you then? I… I could help, travel with you... with the Slaying."

"You… a lot has happened Leah."

"I… but… but I… there must be something, some way. Even just for a little while. I could get my passport. I…"

"Leah. I know about the imprinting."

"Oh." She said, so quietly, so weakly, that I could hardly connect it to the strong, confident, powerful woman I had known. "Is that… does that freak you out?"

"Is there anyway to break the imprint. Anyway at all? Some magicks or something?"

"I don't want… I… can't you just come back? I know it's intense but, if… if you just come back I can show you... "

"I can't Leah."

"Please."

"I can't. I literally can't."

"Please? Please? Please… oh god Buffy, it hurts, it hurts so much."

"Leah." I felt those strange ghost tears scratching at my eyes again. I sniffed and blew out a breath that seemed ice cold to me now. "You… are amazing. You are so amazing to me, I cherish that you were in my life. I do."

"No. Please no. Don't do this to me. Please. Please, Buffy. Buffy. BUFFY!!"

"I'm sorry."

"BUFFY!!!"

The phone receiver felt like a guillotine blade as I brought it down.

...

It must have been something in my expression as I numbly stepped into the main room, but Alice immediately dropped the garment she was showing Rosalie and rushed to embrace me.

I felt nothing as she held me. Nothing at all, like all thoughts and emotions had drained away into the floorboards beneath me and left me just motionless, just a body.

Alice shifted, tightening the embrace, and only then did I realize my hands were hanging passively at my sides. I placed them around her waist in a way I found too perfunctory; a mere simulation of a hug.

I noticed the absence of my heartbeat more than ever, the absence of any responding thrum from Alice's own heart. No tick of time, no lulling rhythm. Just maddening silence.

I glanced up to find Rosalie watching us, her face expressionless and distant, like she was lost in a memory. Her eyes met mine, and we just stared at each other until Alice eventually broke the stillness by drawing in a breath.

"What happened?" She said.

I didn't really have an answer for her. I stepped back and took a breath so I could speak, but it just stuck in my throat.

"I just… need…" what?

What did I need?

The great, spacious house suddenly felt small, shrinking, the walls shifting and closing in like that moment in the Irkalla when the hospital walls rolled in on themselves as the visions broke apart, but imperceivable, insidiously subtle.

I felt like I was being crushed. I pulled free of Alice's grasp and backed towards the door. I couldn't meet her gaze, I kept my eyes to the floor. A tiny splinter on the edge of a floorboard came into sharp focus. I looked away into the forest outside.

"I… have to…" I said, and made for the door. Alice moved to follow me, but Rosalie caught her arm.

I made my way out across the lawn. I didn't run, I didn't feel like I had strength to. I just thumped one foot numbly after the other, as if I could draw myself away from the pain I had caused.

Her voice, Leah's weak and broken voice. The desperation, a drowning woman frantically trying to make it the surface.

I felt as if I myself was being held underwater. Usually in undeath there is a stillness from your lungs, an absence of need. You could hold your breath for hours and no panic would come, no screaming to draw in air.

But it was like my lungs forgot that.

I had to breathe, needed to breathe, but could not breathe.

The urgency of it energizing my feet, and I picked up speed, breaking into a run as I hit the treeline.

Leah was drowning. The magick that made her, that made her a warrior against the undead, had bound her to one. How sick was that? How sick and demented was the ancient one's that forged such a curse on their own? Like The Shadow Men that made that first The Slayer by binding her to a demon and all those who would follow… what sickening, vile, heartless, blind, abuse. None of us had a choice in this. Their cruelty bled down through generations.

But no, that was my curse. Leah's was a pure thing gone wrong- A soul bond, a true mate, a protector… imprinting was a beautiful, romantic notion. And two warriors of light coming together in such a bond? How powerful, how epic.

No, it was me that was the curse. Instead of receiving her love, instead of being strong enough, to be warrior enough for that destiny, I had willingly fell to a sordid obsession with a vampire.

Leah was in hell, not because of the magicks, but because of me.

I was the curse.

And as I ran on into the forest, images and proofs rolled into my mind.

The coven, who had so warmly welcomed me in as a daughter was at risk because of me.

Mom and Charlie grieving because of me.

My first Watcher Merrick dead because of me.

My second, Diana, drunk and broken, screaming at me that I was a monster as I pathetically protested. The same night I murdered her sister Karin, to make her a monster too.

I was the curse.

Then came the frighteningly vivid vision of Leah, gaunt and greying, starved skeletal, eyes red with tears, her mind consumed over and over with my last words to her. The cruel way I cut the line.

I felt choked up at the idea, like black bile in my throat- like the toxic black foam from The Irkalla.

I broke free of the thorny undergrowth and plunged headfirst into a clearing, toppling me down into the dirt. I landed hard, the force driving out all the emotions from me at once, forming a twisted scream as they flew past my soil stained lips.

Then anger came, and I clawed at the earth and staggered back to my feet.

With a roar, I kicked out at a tree- The blow tearing through the trunk, sending shards raining out.

Still, I didn't feel a thing. I should feel it. I should be in agony. So I punched it. Harder, harder, and harder still so the shock travelled through me and rang against my teeth. The spine of the tree shattered and it split and fell with a mighty groan.

The trunk barely hung on by a few threads of jagged wood, which I kicked, snapping it, sending the log flipping over and down, crashing into the stream.

I noticed then, how the tree had split- in a fan of thick, ragged spikes before me. I became mesmerized by one of the shards.

Like a stake.

I knew what it would smell like- the heat, the burning. I remembered the Vampire in Volterra; I pressed so intimately to his body as I let my stake slowly reach his heart, I could feel his shudders and his body turning to ash. Now overlayed with my own experience of being a vampire, I could imagine it vividly. I could go slow too, like I did him. Let myself burn.

I stepped towards the trunk, towards the jagged point. It was chest height.

I was a monster because I was weak. Because I chose this path, offering myself up to Alice rather than be what I was called to be. Regardless of the plans in action around me, I had failed. I had failed as a protector of humanity, as The Slayer. I had brought suffering for all those that knew me. That loved me.

I looked at the spike. It would be so easy.

Time seemed to still, but then, there came a deep, braying sound from far down the lake. A deer call. It resonated sharply off the trees like they were crystal, and made my head snap up of its own accord, I was tasting the air instinctively, like the beast I was.

I wanted it's blood. I wanted all the blood. I wanted to feast on every animal and every human to cross my path. I felt the endless hunger burning in my gut just under the boiling guilt. Oh god, the things I wanted to do. Was willing to do.

I tore the chunk of sharp wood from the tree.

I was The Slayer still, wasn't I? Despite my undeath, I still had those powers. That strength. I could drive that stake into my heart so hard it would come out the back of me. I could.

I could.

I can.

I placed the stake to my heart.

It would be easy.

I shouldn't have it easy.

I should suffer. It should be me in hell not Leah. Not mom or Charlie.

And if I dusted, here and now, would I go to hell? I was a demon now, so wouldn't that just be going home? Would I receive a warm welcome?

My hand wavered.

Then another thought took me. I had a hell to go to, if I wanted one. I had hell in a bottle. The vial the brothers carried to lace their arrows. And time moved differently in The Irkalla.

What if I drank down the entire thing? How long would I suffer before they found me?

The cabin was close. The vial, along with all the brother's possessions, in a shallow grave nearby.

I had to go. I had to.

…

Esme was waiting at the cabin, sitting on the edge of the deck, her arms tucked under her knees. She wore a loose cream blouse and slacks. To the world, she would have looked like a woman on holiday. But I knew she was waiting for me. To try and save me.

"You felt it." I said, as I approached. She nodded, her face filled with anguish, with pity.

"I can't even just be without hurting someone."

"Do you love Alice?" She said.

"You tell me, Esme. You would sense it if I didn't, right? You can just peek into my soul any time."

"Only when you let me. Or when everything comes spilling out of you, like today." She said. "Of course I know you love Alice. I was just reminding you that you do, before you use that stake."

Another wave of guilt washed over me, and I could see it flutter through Esme's eyes.

"I… Esme…. I…"

"Buffy, my darling girl" Esme said, and offered up a graceful porcelain hand to me "Here, come chat with me. Just a chat."

"Still my therapist." I said as we reached the balcony.

"If that's what you need." She said with a smile. "But I am off the clock. I consider this more of a "concern over my new daughter's wellbeing" talk."

"How is that different?"

"I am emotionally invested." She said, "So a world of difference for me."

"Don't lose any sleep over me." I said. She chuckled. "I am not worth it."

"Feelings are strange creatures Buffy. They follow thoughts like ripples through us, and they shout so loudly to us that often we think of them as real." She said. "Edward may read thoughts, but I feel their wake." She patted the deck next to her. "You poor thing. I could sense yours from across the lake."

I hesitantly sat, still clutching my stake.

"See, emotions and thoughts? They aren't reality. They shout so loud that we can sometimes forget that we make them ourselves. We get so wrapped up in our own weavings that we can't see."

"The reality is I destroy everything and everyone I am close to." I said. "That's what I do."

"That's your thoughts. That's not the truth."

"Feels pretty true to Leah Clearwater right now."

"What happened?"

"The wolves have this thing. Like, this mystical bonding thing."

"Imprinting?" Esme said. She then assembled a picture from there. "Oh, poor girl."

"See what I mean?"

"Actually, no." Esme said softly. "I take it she imprinted on you." Iet my guilt answer that.

She hummed and leaned back onto her hands.

"Buffy, did you choose to be The Slayer?"

"Of course not" I said incredulously.

"Did Leah choose to imprint on you? Hmmm."

"I…"

"You didn't choose it either, right?"

"I shouldn't be like… this. This is my fault."

"Depends on where you sit. From where I am sitting, I see a girl who gave her life because she was in love and wanted to be loved."

"That's just spin."

"So is painting it as a failure of duty. We shape our own narrative Buffy."

"However I shape it or spin it, that still leaves Leah destroyed. And dad, and mom. And…"

"It would destroy Alice to lose you. And our family would forever have a 'you' shaped hole in it. But, more important than any of that, you would have lost the chance to find out what good you can do in the world. Because you can, Buffy. You did as a human, as a Slayer. Why not as an immortal?

I had no answers to give. Esme stood, and offered me her hand.

"Come on. Come with me."

...

For a dread moment I thought she was leading me back into the house. I wasn't ready for anyone to see me yet. I felt my shame etched into my dirty, disheveled face. So it was with some relief when I realised she was leading me around to the shady side nearest the cedar woods.

She leapt up onto a balcony as easily as a human could step off a log. It struck me that it was the first time I had seen Esme do anything vampiric at all. She was always so lovingly… human.

I leapt up to find her sitting on one of the chairs. I recognized the space now, for it was the balcony attached to the clinic where I had recovered from the truck crash.

I had spent day after day sitting here, gazing out across the wooded mountains.

I sat where I had back then, drawing my knees up to my chest, hugging them to me. It was a very closed off gesture, I guess, but I didn't feel like adjusting it. The stake suddenly felt out of place in my hand, so I placed it down onto the box like table between us.

"I remember when we were last here." She said, drawing in a deep breath of the cedar scented air. "I am deeply sorry I had to lie to you then, I hope you understand now why."

"Guess it wasn't easy. Your daughter was in love with The Slayer. Your family was at risk from me and from the Volturi." I said. "I am not sure I would have been so merciful, in your place."

"Last time we were here you said that 'if this was your home, you would never want to leave'. Do you remember?"

"Yeah."

"Do you still like it out here?"

I looked out over the cedars, now cast in a new, crisp detail in my sharpened vision. Cascading patterns, repeating over and over, the golden ratio, the magical fractal that is nature. On and on, tree by tree, spreading out over the valley, onwards, endless, gloriously complex. The heady smell, richer than ever, spiked here and there with the trails of prey- notes and flavors. I could even see how the light, dappled by the clouds, give those very clouds shape in my mind, though they were themselves out of sight.

"Even more so now." I said "through these eyes."

"You find this soothing and stimulating all at once." Esme said, very much a statement, reminding me that the woman had an open door to my feelings. "That settles it."

She turned her gaze to the surgery, I could almost see the wheels turning behind her golden honey eyes.

"Settles what?"

"This will be your room. I will start pestering Carlisle tonight." Esme said with a nod, like it was a done deal. "I can help you redecorate as soon as he moves all his… homework... out."

"But… I share with Alice. Like Edward and Jessica."

"Your relationship with Alice doesn't define you, Buffy. You need space of your own, to be yourself. To belong. What color shall we paint it?"

"I… uh." I said, looking back at the clinic behind us. It was sterile white.

"What furniture would you like?"

"I… uh."

"Books? Knick knacks? What do you like?"

My thoughts turned to my room at Charlie's house. The freshly painted walls, the old rocking chair throne for Mr. Gordo. And the hangar and beautiful mirror that Leah Clearwater had made me with her own strong, loving hands.

"I don't know."

"May I share an observation Buffy? I think, you have spent your whole life being told what you are, being forced to live in spaces that were not your own. I think you can't answer these questions because you haven't been allowed to be you."

"I don't know who that is. I just… I don't know what to do. I don't belong anywhere."

"All those pesky thoughts about not belonging? You need to slay them. The sooner the better."

"What if I can't?"

"Then, travel. Meet other immortals. Experience the world apart from us for a while. Then, when you are ready, know that you have a place with us. A room and a family."

"What about Alice?"

"Alice has waited decades for you Buffy, a few months, or a year or two more won't kill her. Time is different for us now, you have barely touched your toe into that pond."

"I am not sure that will help. Leaving. It's not that I haven't found myself, it's just… this is all so wonderful but… it's just everything I ever touched turned to crap. I am like King Merde-ass."

"You are afraid to enjoy this incase you lose it?" Esme said.

"It sounds silly now you put it that way."

She turned to sit facing me, drawing her legs up in a similar manner to mine, strangely the act made her seem so much younger than I usually imagined her. She was only in her late twenties, externally, but she was a mother figure, which shifted it in my mind. Of course, as an immortal, she was older- just short of a century, which shifted my perception of her yet again. She was right, time really was different to us.

She took my hands in hers.

"Being an immortal can be a curse, but it is also a gift. An amazing change. I can barely recall what it was like before Carlisle changed me, but I remember being just awestruck by the difference." She said.

I nodded.

"Buffy, there is so much change in your life right now, and danger is all around. It must be so hard. Like you are a ship being thrown around on strange oceans in a storm. So I offer you this. The coven, the family, we can be your rock, we can be your anchor. You are a Cullen now, and that is regardless of Alice's feelings. You belong. And we will protect you, and help you and be here for you. You haven't had that before, have you?"

I shook my head. As best as Joyce and Charlie loved me, and I knew they did, it was very much at a distance. They didn't know me really. Not just my secret life as The Slayer, but any of it. I learned to not rely on them. Or anyone.

"You are looking for reasons why you don't deserve this. But, suck it up, because you don't have a choice now. You are family, Buffy. If you need a reason why you DO deserve this, well, in my mind you became worthy the moment you selflessly rushed to save Alice's life."

"That was instinct."

"Even more the measure of you then, isn't it?" She said, giving my hands a little shake. "Just so you know, Edward is coming in now, I called to him."

Sure enough, Edward appeared. He handed a box to Esme, smiled and left us both alone.

Esme flipped the lid on the box, and pulled out my Cullen crest. Taking my passive hands again, she placed the crest into my palm and cupped her own around them.

"Buffy. You are brave, and selfless and your instincts are beautiful. You belong here, with us. And whatever you face, we will face it with you. Because you are part of us. Wear this as a reminder. Let it be your anchor when your mind feels lost in that storm."

I look again at the Cullen crest in my hands, and for a moment, I feel guilty for not wearing it sooner, but then something shifts in my mind, perhaps because I now see clearly why I didn't put it on before.

"I am sure Alice has something you can wear it on." She turned her attention back to the room behind us.

"I like fairy lights." I offered, my voice small and vulnerable. "Makes things seems magical."

"Magical. Yes. We can make this little corner of the world feel magical for you. Would you like that?"

I nodded.

"Let's get started then."

…

Alice was sat at her drawing table, sketching. I expected her to keep focused on her work, but this time she looked up as I entered and immediately set down her pencil.

She closed the distance, but hesitantly, as if she wasn't sure if I needed her affection at this moment, or space. So it was I that stepped forward to draw her into a tender kiss.

"Forgive me." I said.

"What for?"

"I…" I didn't answer, couldn't without feeling even more shame. "Just… I want you to know I love you."

"You're scaring me."

"Don't be. I am not going to do anything stupid." Now.

I let out a breath, then tapped my skull. "S'lot going on up here. Good thing Edward doesn't have a season pass, it would be driving him nuts too. I shut you out a bit."

"Esme set you straight?"

"Well… " I smile, nipping at her earlobe. "Not exactly 'straight'."

"Thankfully" she whispers.

"But yeah, I feel better." I said, then holding up the crest, "Do you have something for…"

"Of course." She said, sliding open a drawer. What would you prefer? Choker? Necklace? Wrist cuff?"

"Something I can fight with. Something I can see." I said. She nodded, then selected a cuff from her drawer, and set about fixing my crest to it.

When she reaches to place the cuff on my wrist, I stopped her.

"Wait." I said. "If it's okay, I kinda need to do it."

"Of course." She said with a knowing smile. She placed it reverently in mind hand. She took a step back.

I turned it over to look at it, really trying to take in and its meaning. It was beautifully made, soft leather stamped in an almost lace finish along the edge that was very Alice. I chuckled at this. Alice's own was on a choker around her graceful neck. I planted a reassuring kiss on her lips.

Then, I slid the cuff into place on my left wrist, and secured the two straps tightly so that I would be aware of it. Made sure it felt present. I held it up and made a fist.

"It really suits you." Alice said with a warm smile.

"I haven't thanked you. For making me. For bringing me here. For loving me."

"You..." Alice said, drawing me close, "...are…" she kissed my cheek, "...so…" she kissed my jaw, "...very…" she kissed under my earlobe, "...welcome." she kissed the flesh of my neck where her bite had claimed me.

"I promise you-" I said, thinking back to the stake I held in my hand.

"What?"

"Everything."

…

The family had gathered to my call. Rosalie and Emmett where already on the couch by the central coffee table. Edward sat at the grand piano. Esme entered from the surgery with Carlisle, no doubt discussing her plans.

Jessica was the last to appear, her face still bloody from a kill. By the time I had spread out Veronica's files and our drawings on the table, the blood had vanished- drawn into her icy white skin.

Thought it had seemed so fascinating to me when I had witnessed it with Alice face, it seemed strangely chilling on Jessica's features.

Perhaps it was because I was so used to her being that dorky, warm, innocent chatterbox girl from high school that I found her transformation was jarring. I had to remind myself that the graceful, sharply featured woman before me had murdered, and devoured, three people. The Jessica Stanley I knew was as dead and gone.

I realised that that Jessica would have died of her illness.

This Jessica… Jessica, my sister, was a bloodthirsty monster, like me. But that was only one facet of her. For she was a monster who sang like an angel, who loved making music and was in love with her high school sweetheart and looking eagerly forward to the day she married him.

What a strange duality we all lead.

The coven was now all gathered, waited in that awkward, immortal way.

I realised all eyes where on me. So, taking a deep breath, I began to share everything Veronica had uncovered in detail. The plot to capture Alice, Alan Finch hiring the brothers, The Mayor, everything. They listened intently and soberly. When I had finished, all eyes were on the papers spread over the coffee table.

"Always keeps coming back to Sunnydale." Edward said.

"Buffy wants to go there." Alice said. Her voice was even, and I had to wonder if the lack of bitterness was Esme's gift at work too. She was sat next to her mother on the furthest couch from me. "If she goes, I go."

"I, however, want her to keep somewhere safe." I said. "She was their target, after all."

"We could relocate." Rosalie says. "Wait for The Volturi to clean house."

"That's putting a lot of trust in The Volturi babe." Emmett said, "besides, these folk knew where we were, where to send their mercenaries. I am not sure we running will help."

"That bugs me too." I said. "It was convenient they had this address, knew where to strike."

"So" Esme said "we can assume they either know our properties, or have some gifted individual who can sense where we are."

"So even if we lay low it won't make us safer." Emmett said. Rosalie growled to herself.

"Something else annoying me." She said, "is that they sent humans in the first place. Why send humans? Why not immortals?"

Rosalie was right. I spread out the papers across the table and looked again at the puzzle. I tried to look for assumptions I had made. Assumptions make an ass out of u and me, after all. I tried to shift the circles around, make new categories instead of assuming one. Why not vampires?

"What if… what if Alan wasn't acting on behalf of The Mayor? He was human, and was murdered after. What if he was working with another group?"

"Aurelius… Volturi… who else?" Esme said.

"Oz mentioned rebels." Emmett added.

"The White Hats." Rosalie said. "Also Dog boy conveniently shows up from Sunnydale and points us there. What was he here to talk about Buffy? Hmm?"

"That's for Alice and Buffy to discuss first." Edward said. "But I heard his thoughts. It's not at all related to this, and he hasn't lied to us. It made him uncomfortable withholding anything from The Quileute people. I read him as nothing but honest."

"So… " Esme said, "Alan could have been working for The White Hats. Why would they need a seer, and how would they know about Alice?"

My eyes settled on one of the drawing's Alice had made.

_Oh_.

_No_.

"Maybe not The White Hats. Someone who knew Alice, who had access to a seer." I stabbed my finger down onto the drawing.

"Angelus." Alice said, and seeing confused looks around the room added, "His childe Drusilla was a seer. Like me. He wanted to turn me, drive me mad and then turn me. Like her."

Esme reached for Alice's hand, which she took thankfully. Alce gave herself so easily over to Esme's care. And she had known her for so many years- I should trust in that, shouldn't I? Alice closed her eyes, drawing in a shaky breath, nodding at Esme as her gift soothed her trauma.

"Angelus had Alan Finch try to capture Alice?" Jessica offered. "Seems to fit."

"Again, why humans?" Rosalie said. "If Alice was important to that bastard, why risk just sending humans?"

"What if they had to use humans because all the immortals where needed." Edward said.

"If they have a seer, then they may know The Volturi are gunning for them."

"I don't like this." I said. "We need to know our enemy if we are going to be effective at neutralizing the threat to the coven."

"I should go." Edward said. "I would just need to get near the Mayor's office to hear them think."

"And I need to go with to make them rethink." I said with a sneer.

"What if the used humans because they were meant to fail." Jessica said. "What if they were like... I dunno… breadcrumbs?".

"To draw the family down to Sunnydale. To get us involved in the war." Emmett said. With that sobering thought the family fell into silence. Believe me, no one quite does silence like a room full of vampires.

Then Carlisle drew in an uneasy breath.

"We are involved no matter what." He said. "House Aurelius threatens the safety of our family one way or another. Either directly or by exposing our kind. I won't have our family split up to face this. We are stronger together, and stronger still with The Volturi aid."

There were murmurs of agreement. Carlisle met my gaze.

"Also" he added "let us not forget Buffy's mother Joyce, and the other mortals of Sunnydale are at risk. We must aid them if we can."

"Thank you." I said.

"We must prepare, I will go and call The Volturi and-"

He was cut short by a loud bang, as Alice kicked the glass table. She was arched up, her eyes fluttering under her lids.

A moment later and her features contorted, first shocked, then horrified, then what looked like grief. She drew in a strangled gasp and she spasmed again and fell to the side, I vaulted the table and caught her. Esme still had her hand, and we guided Alice to the floor together.

"There coming!" She gasped, snapping out of her vision. "No. No! Too late… they are here!"

"Who?"

I could hear it then, coming from the south, growing louder fast . The sounds of helicopters roaring towards us.

"Death." Alice said.


	15. All That Remains

Chapter 14

All That Remains

The two helicopters came in fast and loud. Both were matt black with no lights; even still I could make them out clearly in the deep purple dusk sky.

As far as I could tell, they where not attack helecopters, not military, but despite having no armaments visible, there was something terrifying, something agressive in their bulky forms.

I left Alice to Esme's care and made for the door.

The roar of the engines was deafening now. They came in low across the lake, their downdraft, whipping up water high into a vortex.

The first to reach us stopped sharply and all but dropped from the sky in what looked to me like a bone shatteringly hard landing upon the far side of the lawn.

I expected those huge black doors to fly back, revealing gun toting mercenaries or some other horrors, and that made my legs pump harder, tearing the earth beneath me. If I could reach it in time, if I get to the doors before whoever they where could level their weapons...

I felt my family running with me, felt their fire. They where ready for whatever came. In that instant I felt a part of them. My team. My coven.

My family.

But the doors did not fly open. The engines cut out with a whine, and as we reached them, the pilot of the first had staggered out and landed on one knee.

The second helecopter came in slower, almost like it was exhausted from a run to the finish line, it reared back and hovered over us, then began a wavering descent.

"Sur...survivors." the pilot said as she slumping into Rosalie's arms. "Doctor... Cullen."

"Who are you?" I yelled at her through the din of the engines. She slipped her helmet off, revealing cropped silver hair. The stink of her blood hit me like an anvil. She was human. I stepped back, my hand going to my nose and mouth.

"The purge... went wrong, horribly wrong." The pilot said. "Help them."

"Volturi?" Rosalie said. "She's a familiar."

I wrenched back the handle of the huge windowless black door, and with a hiss, it slid back, hitting me with a blast of air, stinking of death and molten solder.

Inside was a knot of dark figures, dressed in Volturi robes, some strapped to the seats, other upon the floor, their mangled, twisted limbs hissing and popping.

I recognized the closest casualty immediately. How could I not? It was Jane Volturi.

The doll like woman was folded in agony, the right side of her entire body and face was blackened and cracked through, like charcoal, with broad silvery wounds hacked into her flesh. To my horror, I could see the deepest edge of the fissures glowing red, crackling with heat from within.

How had she not dusted?

Behind Jane, the closest of the five casualties, was a woman I had seen in Volterra, with singed grey robes and slicked back short blonde hair. She clutched what little was left of her right arm, her forearm hacked through, hand missing, her biceps shot through with metal cracks. She looked up at me, her left eye little more than a scorched hole, a deep orange glow from within like some demonic eye.

"Carlilse!" Edward called. He had opened the second helicopters door to reveal a similar scene of horror. A Volturi guard tumbled out of the door, his body crumbling, turned to nothing but ash and sparks at it hit the floor.

Emmett was holding down a thrashing male guard which Esme was trying to sooth. He was lean and powerful with short blond hair. His seemed to be in severe pain as he arched his back, I could see that his chest had been punctured through numerous times, a stake still buried deep into the blackened mess of his shoulder.

Carlilse was issuing orders, but I was deaf and numb with shock.

The family moved together, pulling free the survivors from their strapping, laying them out on the lawn.

A woman, well, a girl, with black bobbed hair, who looked just like me, lay on the floor on a blanket made from her own cloak. I watched her scream as her wounds took her, her chest erupting momentarily into flames before caving inwards, metal slivers crawling across her body slowly, followed by tiny flames, blackening the flesh. Another guard, a dark skinned male, went to her, crying out in grief as she burned in his arm. Finally, mercifully, crumbling to dust.

Rosalie stepped back as the guard she was attending ignited, thrashing as their body burned.

"Lake. Get them to the lake." I shouted. "It may cool the reaction." Carlisle nodded and he grabbed his patient up.

I turned and seized Jane, who screamed in protest, and bundling her up in my arms, ran to the lake, and dived in.

Jane's body hissed, like hot metal quenched in the forge. She tried to surface, but her face still glowed, and I held her down. Part of me, I confess, found it amusing to be drowning the witch. But the better part of me watched as the glow slowly abated, and I lifted the small vampire into my arms. She gasped the water out, gripping me for support. Her head slumped against my shoulder, she was weak, close to passing out.

"It's working." I yelled. Carlisle shot me a smile, his patient was clearly responding too.

Jane seemed more than ever like a ragdoll in my arms.

"Well that's one outfit ruined. You owe me big time, you little witch."

Confident the burning had ceased, I lifted the barely conscious girl into my arms and trudged back to the lawn, placing her down with the rest.

All about me, the Volturi guard lay shattered, wounded, weak and soaked through. I shook my head in disbelief.

"An ambush. There was a girl… she did this." Edward was at my side, looking about the fallen, sifting through images in his mind. "One teenage girl and a woman."

"One girl did all this?." I said. _Slayer_. "What did the woman look like? Did she have blonde hair, green eyes?"

"No, jet black. The girl was a brunette, both white skin. The girl had a sort of red axe, combined with a stake. She was fast. Real fast."

"Soon as you can, work with Alice, we need drawings." I said. He nodded.

One of the wounded caught my attention. She wasn't dressed in Volturi garb, but a tacky emerald velvet dress, the kind you would see at a renaissance fair. Her hair was long and dirty blonde, some of which had curled and melted around the sorched head wound on the back of her skull. She sat folded forward, clutching the area with one good arm, glowering at the helecopter with peircing red eyes.

I followed her gaze and startled at what I saw.

The woman sat on the edge of the cabin, palm to the floor, her feet resting on the skids. She had a bored expression on her ice white face. Her hair was ginger, tangled and singed where her face had been struck by the weapon. A spiderweb of silver radiating out from her right temple, glinting in the moonlight.

"Willow Rosenberg?" I said, approaching her cautiously.

The girl merely glanced at me before looking back over the carnage. Her eyes blackened and bruised, her makeup smeared, her pupils a reddy black.

"Everyone seems to know my name." She says, her voice distant and weak. "Hardly seems fair."

I sat down next to her on the metal lip of the cabin. Willow was a slight bit taller than me, her body slender and tightly bound in torn, scuffed, blood spattered leather. She stank of soil and gasoline.

"I am Buffy. Of The Cullen Clan." I said. "What happened?"

"Everything's gone. She took it. All of it." She said.

Willow smearing at her nose with the back of her hand, which caused her scorched cheek to crumble away a little. She didn't seem to notice any pain, or if she did, she was just too overloaded to react.

"I couldn't stop her. I tried, but it was like my gift just bled out of me, my magicks, she took it from me... I couldn't protect them."

"The Master's gone, Darla, Xander..." her brow furrowed and she shook in something like a sob. "Sandy."

"Who did this?" I said.

"She stole my gift. Stole all the gifts."

"Who?" I said. The girl was staring at me now, like for the first time, and yet the look in her big eyes was just as distant as before.

"Why are your eyes yellow? Like honey." She said. "So pretty."

"Willow, please, I need to know who did this and if we are in immediate danger here."

"Of course we are in danger. She has all the power she wants. She has The Hellmouth. It will sing to her like it did me."

"Who?"

She shrugged.

A scent on the wind caught our attention, and we both looked up.

Emmett, Jessica and a cloaked figure of a Volturi guard, a short blond man with a mop of unruly hair had returned from the hunt, all three carrying deer, which they threw down as they reached us.

Willow's brow furrowed in confusion, but when Emmet tore at the throat of his kill with powerful hands, and the blood started to flow, her eyes flared and she let out a keening whimper.

In a blur she lept from the cabin and buried her fangs into the carcass. Her satisfies groan convinced the others, who had hovered with looks of disgust and curiosity. They all fell upon the kill and drank.

Alice appeared at my side, her face filled with need. I pulled her down to where Willow had sat but a moment before and wrapped her into a hug. She slipped her arms around me and buried her face in my shoulder.

"What is it?" I said.

"I saw something." She whispered. "Something else. Something terrible."

"What?"

"They are going to die." She said. "Rosalie and Emmett." She said.

I look over to my family. Emmett is holding still the Volturi guard with a stake in his shoulder as Rosalie pours a vial of blood into his many puncture wounds.

Edward is hugging Jessica, who is watching the feast with a wicked grin. His eyes flick up to us, his expression still, his brow slightly furrowed. I know that he knows, because he can see Alice's thoughts. He has seen them die too.

"We can change it." I said. "We have to change it."

I plant a kiss on Alice's head and rock her in my arms. I think about a Slayer with weapon that inflicts wounds that do not heal, and a black haired woman who can steal gifts. A chill goes through me.

If Alice could see our own deaths, would she ever tell me?

"We will." I said. "I promise."


	16. Damned If You Do

Chapter 15

Damned If You Do

The Volturi Guard strike force were thirty strong when they had assembled in Los Angeles. Alec had been in charge of one team, Jane the other.

Of those thirty warriors, now only six remained. Jane, Eric, Santiago, Jasper and the twins Isadora and Heidi.

I found out that the human pilot succumbed to her wounds. To my distaste, she became food for the guard shortly after. Her body would need to be buried.

Jane drifted in and out of consciousness, her once cruel eyes now void, gazing off into space. I didn't get much out of her myself, but when she spoke to Esme, what I overheard was enough to chill me to the bone.

She told me the woman stole away all their gifts- her's, Demitri's and Alec's. Robbed of his senses, crippled with agony, Alec stood no chance against The Slayer when she had finally cut through the guard and came for her brother's head.

"We were together for over a thousand years." She said, her lips trembling. "I never thought I would ever be alone."

Esme's gift held her together. But only just. That strange, ancient, cracked porcelain doll. I never thought I could pity her.

The Aurelian survivors were just two- Tara and Willow. Not knowing the purpose of The Volturi, they had merely seen fellow vampires under attack and had aided them to escape. Tara and Willow hadn't shared a single word since they arrived. They sat apart from the Volturi, and apart from each other. As far as their dynamic went, wherever Willow went, Tara would vacate.

'My' room was needed for its original intended purpose. It was keeping the powerful blonde vampire Eric with us, drip feeding him blood and pain killers as his body barely held back the damage. There was some system of coolants involved too, but it just looked like blue sludge being piped around to me.

Isadora was down there as well, along with her identical twin Heidi; they seemed inseparable. The same couldn't be said for Isadora and her arm. It seemed to me ruined, Carlilse had taped together so it could hopefully bond, and perhaps regrow. Looking at Isadora's cracked and scorched limb, it really made me wonder.

I was on the stairwell, looking down on the rag tag group of immortals assembled around our living room.

"We have a problem." I muttered to Edward as he passed. "Well, another problem. In a few hours the sun is going to come up and we basically live in a glass house. I suspect our visitors don't share our sparkly peace pact with the sun."

"You're right." He said. "The wine cellar."

"We have a wine cellar?"

"Well, it's there, it's just not stocked. The shelves need to be cleared out to make room. " He looked down at the floor for a moment, then smiled his lopsided smile. "Okay… Emmett and Rosalie are on it."

"Edward." I said, "about Alice's vision."

"Have faith. We will stop it from happening." He smiled and patted me on the shoulder, "We have a slayer too."

"Alright everyone" Rosalie announced from the kitchen. "just so you know, we are going to relocate you all down to the cellar. It's the only place safe from the sun. We will need some assistance clearing the space, sun isn't up for four hours, so we have plenty of time."

I left her organising them, and made my way back to Alice's room, seeking some peace and quiet. She was at the drawing table, holding up pictures to the light. I didn't want to disturb her.

I stripped off my grime covered, wet clothes and threw them into the hamper. It amused me she had one. I suspected it may as well be a bin as far as Alice was concerned. I ditched my underwear and started digging through the shopping bags from our Seattle.

"Is this a life drawing class?" Came the strange voice, syrupy and dark.

I looked up in horror, realizing it was not Alice, but Willow sitting at the easel. She looked at my nudity blatantly, and, I confess to my pleasure, approvingly.

"What are you doing in here?" I said, covering myself as best I could. "What… what…"

"Admiring all the pretty things." She said, holding up a picture, but her eyes flicked down to my breasts as she said it. That long, lazy sultry smile from my vision was back. Her red eyes sparkling mischievously.

"Stop it. You should… you shouldn't be... in here." I stammered as she stood slowly, stretching her back like a cat. "Looking at… stuff."

"My bad." She said, her eyes sparkling wickedly and she leered at me. "I have always been... curious. Gets me in all kinds of interesting situations."

"God, do you always speak in innuendos? Can you give me some privacy please?"

"Now what would be the point of that? I have seen it all now." She said, "unless you feel it's unfair. I could show you mine, make us even." Her fingers traced along the red frill at her leather halter, down to the buttons.

"Stop. Please." I said. "I… am taken. I… I am with Alice."

"The pretty seer?" She said, her brow arching. She then bit her full lip and smiled. "Forgive me, when I see something I want… " she smiled again as she backed away, "I tend to not think about anything else."

She turned her back to me slowly, her eyes lingering on my body, then turned her attention to the keepsakes on Alice's shelves.

I used the opportunity to hurriedly slip on some fresh underwear, red leather pants and a loose black top. When I glanced back, I had expected Willow to be looking at me over her shoulder. I felt a stab of disappointment that she wasn't. Then a stab of guilt.

"Wait." I said. "Seer. You said seer."

Willow turned then, her eyes once again sweeping unashamedly over me.

"The drawings, of me, of Luke, of the puppy. They smell like her." She said. "This is her room. And she sees things, doesn't she? I have a little niece just like her."

"Drusilla." I said.

"Interesting. You know about her too? Or was I wrong? Are you the seer?" She said, approaching me, her red eyes searching my face. I was by the mirror, where I had stood that first night with Alice. Willow's breath made me shudder, but in a different way. I stepped back as she leaned into me.

"Yes. It calls you too." she said, stroking her hand over the air before my face as she had in my vision, then, as if she snapped awake, she drew her hand back, staring at it. "I… I… am sorry, I… oh god, you must think me so rude."

Willow stepped back, looking around the room anew, somehow awkward in her own skin. She blinked, as if tears were coming.

"I… I'm sorry. It changes you." She said. "D… Don't go to it. Don't." She stepped back further, banging against the shelving clumsily. She steadied a skull that was toppling and looked back at me sheepishly.

"What's happening?" I said.

"I… don't know. I feel different... icky." She said, nervously sliding her hands across her belly in way far from sexual. "What am I doing? I am so, so sorry… I shouldn't be here… in here, looking at you." She could barely look at me now.

"Willow, do you mean The Hellmouth? When you said it changes you… did you mean the Hellmouth?"

"I can't go back. Please, don't make me go back." She slid down the shelves, slumping onto the floor. She began to whimper and mumble. I could barely pick up any of it, just "Sandy" and "What have I done?" She was sobbing now.

"Esme!" I yelled.

I crouched down at the girl's side, unsure of what to do. I brushed her hair from her fear fraught eyes. She seemed so young now, so fragile and lost. Her shoulders shuddered.

"Esme will help. She helped me." I said. "Trust me, Willow. Let her help."

"You are kind," she said, "Please... don't go. Don't go to The Hellmouth. It's calling you. It wants you. Don't. Don't go."

She curled up into a fetal ball and started to sob. To my surprise, and to my horror, a single tear fell from her eye.

It was blood.

"Don't go." she whispered.

"I have to." I said.

…

I left her with Esme and paced back down the hall, letting a long breath go. I was exhausted, which in vampire terms meant I needed to hunt.

Whoever she was, this witch, she could steal gifts and use them. She had the power to inflict agony, to rob you of your senses, Willows magick, and whatever the hell that Dimitri guy could do.

I couldn't let her get Edward's gift too. Or Alice's. Hell, in the wrong hands Esme's gift could be just as disastrous.

I could resist the gifts of others, if I was strong. But that was my gift. Could she take that too? Or was it an immutable part of being a Slayer?

Did I have the strength to resist her and fight a slayer? and even if I did, what would I do then? Could I kill the poor girl who followed me? Who was a slayer only because I chose to die?

Yeah, I could feel it rising in me now, the bloodlust. I was hungry. I let go a long breath and raked my fingers through my hair.

"Could this day get any worse?" I groaned.

"Buffy!" Alice said as she reached the top of the stairs, her eyes wild.

"Charlie is here, out front. He is asking for you."


	17. Sticking Her Neck Out

Chapter 16

Sticking Her Neck Out

Edward stopped me as I reached the front door, pressing his hand to it and to my shoulder.

"Carlisle is speaking to him." He said.

"He can't come in, if he sees The Volturi… if they see him... if he comes around the back..."

"Buffy, wait!"

"I have to save him Edward!" I pushed past him, but he seized me harder. I felt anger rising in me, a growled.

"And who will save him from you? Buffy. Your eyes are black."

"I know."

"You go out there, you catch his scent."

"I…" I growled in frustration, stepping back from the door, raking my claws through my hair. And claws they where, I felt the tips of my nails long and sharp against my scalp. My tongue found my mouth full of jagged blades. "Shit."

Alice reached me, doing that hesitant to approach hug thing that must be when I am bleeding emotions. Was I that prickly? I pressed both my hands to the wall and pushed my head against the wood.

"Buffy, come hunt. Now." She said. I growled in response, bashing my head lightly to the wood. Edward pulled in a breath, and looked to the door. "Buffy… now, come."

I looked back at the main room, the horror show of the Volturi survivors, the sharp stares of Santiago and Jasper as they stood watch.

Charlie was coming in. I knew it.

"No time." Edward said, stepping back from the door.

I heard Charlie's voice through the wood.

"You can if you like, but I am damn well getting my daughter!"

"Edward!" Alice hissed, and then, she did something I never expected from her. She violently seized my head by the hair, on both sides of my skull and pulled me from the wall. I winced in pain and in surprise, hopping on one foot as I sought to regain balance.

Before I could realize what was going on I smelt the blood, thick and full in my nostrils. My vision went sharp and my senses locked on the source. I clawed forward as the door opened, seeking the blood. I had to. Damn me, I had to.

My body acted, snapping my head forward and sinking my fangs into the source of the blood- it gushed into my mouth, hot and plentiful, filling my senses until all I could experience was the life force it gave me. But then...

Oh god. Charlie.

I pulled back in horror, looking up to see what I had done.

"Charlie, she's coming out." Edward said, from outside… behind the closed door. "Buffy agreed to come out, she just needs a minute to get ready."

I stared at the gaping wound on Alice's throat, her eyes scrunched shut in pain, I tried to pull away.

"No." She said through gritted, bloody teeth, "keep drinking. Fill. Quickly."

"Alice… I… "

"Hurry." She said.

I did as I was told, pressing my mouth to her deep gash, pulling the life into me. Lost in instinct, drunk, I caught myself pressed my sharpened tongue into the wound, forcing it open, forcing it wider with a sickening sound like metal under force. I whimpered as she hissed in pain, her body shuddering as I weakened it.

I had to stop. I couldn't stop.

"Buffy" she said, her voice weak.

Why couldn't I stop?

Suddenly, emotions hit me like a wall, all at once, guilt, sorrow, love, shame, cycling through me, I shivvered and spasmed, falling back, and Alice fell away from me.

"What the hell is going on?" Charlie said, his voice loud.

"Just a few minutes more sir. Your daughter is coming."

I looked at the scene before me, Alice, my love, unconscious in Esme's arms, her body limp and lifeless. Her throat cracked deeply, as thick black liquid seeped down her neck. Esme looked at me in horror.

"The hell with this." Charlie said.

I opened the door a crack, pawing at my mouth to see if the blood had been absorbed. It had.

And there, in the porch light, stood my father. He appeared much like I had imagined him. In his uniform, of course, and thick winter coat. But his face was gaunt and sallow, his moustache now filled in with a short thick beard.

"Is… it's really you?" He said, stepping forward. His scent hit me then, heady sweet and strong. I felt his heart hammering in his chest, heard the swish-swish of blood through his veins. I could smell his fear too, just a trace, and that aroma made him even more delicious.

I tugged my clothing into place and straightened my hair. Glancing back, I saw Esme give me a nod and mouth "go".

I felt her gift reach me then, the soothing song of it as it passed through me. I took a breath and pulled the door open, just enough to slip through. I kept my back to the door, waiting, hoping that Alice's sacrifice had been enough.

"Dad." I said, my voice cracking. "Yeah, it's me."

Charlie wasn't one for physical affection, and I was suddenly grateful, for he kept his distance. But he extended one hand, palm down, almost like one would soothe a wild animal.

How right the gesture seemed.

"Have they hurt you?"

"No." I said emphatically. "Never. They found me, after I ran. They brought me back from overseas, looked after me whilst I recovered. Esme has been helping me. Dad, I am okay. They are helping me."

"Why? Why didn't you let me know?"

"Dad, just…" I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes. I felt life throbbing through me. I could do this. "Let's just… walk. I will explain. I just… can we just walk?"

"Anything. Yes. Of course."

I stepped around Charlie cautiously, and walked a little up the drive. He followed, glaring a Carlisle.

We walked together, and I found that if I kept moving, the breeze would keep his scent from me. So I set a brisk pace, and he followed.

"I was looking for you Buff. I never stopped looking."

"How did you find me?"

"Sue called me. Said you rang Leah. Star 69."

"Always the cop." I said. "I am sorry you had to go through that."

"Don't be. You were sick. Or are sick, or… but I didn't give up on you. You're my little girl."

"I am still sick. The Cullens helped me, but I wasn't ready to talk to you. Not yet."

We fell into silence for a while. We had made our way to the end of the drive. I wanted to keep moving, and an open space would be better than a lane way, so I pulled open the gate to the paddock just beyond, and guided us into the meadow of the neighboring property.

"You covered your tracks real well." He said, a hint of pride in his tone. "Where did you go?"

"Italy." I said, with a chuckle. "Canada first, but the majority of it I was in Italy."

"What… Seriously?"

"Yeah. I lived in a town near Pisa. Mom would have liked it. Probably too hot for you." I said. "Have you spoken to her?"

"Yeah." He said. The silence that followed said a lot. "You should call her. Let her know you are safe. You are safe, aren't you?"

"I was thinking I might call on her. She's in Sunnydale still?"

"Far as I know. We don't talk much. I just check in each week to let her know… you know. Usually leave a message on her phone."

"Oh. Okay." I said.

We were in a meadow now, the moonlight sparkling against the leaves that dance in the breeze. We were walking along the edge, the forest to our left. It felt easy now, just a father-daughter chat.

"Guess you should tell her you found me, that I am okay."

"Are you?" He said. He could always sniff out a lie, so I just let that question fall away. I mean, I was alright in many respects. But in others, well, my mind came back to the scene of horror back at the house.

"Buffy, you are pale as a ghost. You said you where in Italy. Your eyes seem… off and you seem, I don't know, well, it's just you kinda look more like Esme than Joyce now."

"It's hard to explain." I said.

"Can you at least try?" He said.

I looked at my father's sad, brown eyes and for the first time in, well, just about forever, I wanted to open up to him. To tell him everything, not just in words, rehashing the vampire slayer story I had told Joyce, but show him, *really* show him what I could do. For once, I wanted to.

But I belonged to their world now. And there were rules, not just for ours, but for everyone's good. Charlie never once gave up on me. What if he knew vampires were real? Would he be able to give up on it? Would he get himself killed?

"I can't." I said.

"It's funny, I hear that a lot when strange things happen." He said. "And a lot of strange things happen in these parts."

"Like what?"

"Like wolves the size of bears. Like footprints that shift shape as you follow them. Like people I knew for decades showing up dead, being drained dry. Always, it's "I can't tell you"."

"Sometimes it's better if you don't know the answers."

He stopped walking, and looked at me, really looked at me.

"Mick showed me a video. Well, two videos, from his security loop up at the bar. It was the darndest thing I ever saw."

"Oh?"

"Two girls, teenagers, smash in through a window. Have one hell of a fight, and you know what happened?"

I did.

"One of them picks up and throws a pool cue. Fastest move, three frames- hell, just have to tap back and forward on pause it see it really. Heck of a throw. Must have been fifteen feet. Hit the other girl square in the chest. And she just…"

"Dad…I..."

"Lemme guess. 'I can't tell you.'".

I turned to my father again. He blew out a frustrated breath, ice forming into a mist that sparkled like tiny diamonds to my eyes.

"See that?" He said. "It's about, what, 45, 50 degrees tonight. Buffy, you aren't wearing a coat. With hypothermia, you should be losing coordination by about now, slurring your speech. Yet look at you. you are just fine."

I crossed my arms over my chest, a weak gesture that was fooling nobody. I let them fall to my sides with a huff.

"You know what else I notice?"

I shook my head.

"Your breath don't fog. You ever notice that?

I let out a long, exhausted breath, which just made things worse. He was right- no fog formed. He swallowed and shook his head.

"Everything you said. Back in the clinic. Was it all true?"

"The video. The girl in the video. She was the one draining your friend's dry. I did my job. I stopped her. Story over. Can't that be enough for you?"

"You do that kind of stuff a lot?

"I did." I said. "Not anymore. I am retired now. Some other girl has that honour. I just… I just want… I just want to live with The Cullens and put all that stuff behind me."

Charlie nodded. I decided now was as good a time to head back to the house. I needed him back in the cruiser and safely away.

"They treat you okay though?"

"Yeah. More than okay. Actually… dad, I'm in love. Alice Cullen and I, we're together now."

"I don't know her. She good to you?"

"Dad, she is incredible. I owe her everything. She found me, in Italy. She brought me back here."

"Then I owe her too. Maybe… you two could come over for dinner sometime."

"I… am pretty sure you would not like that." I said. "Er, what with you and social situations… but you should meet her... soon."

"Well, okay." He nodded, his eyes fixing on mine. I looked away, uncertain about what color my eyes would be now. Not hazel, that was for sure. "You know, ain't my place to say this, but Leah really misses you. Kid ain't herself these days."

"I know." I said. "I hope she can move on."

"You know, Sue, her mother and I, well, we're kind of… a thing."

"A thing? As in a 'thing' thing? Really?" I said. The thought of my father moving on? Wow. Now that was news. "But wait, what about Harry?"

"Poor Harry died a year ago- shortly after you left. Heart attack." He said. "Gotta say, feels kinda bad getting close to Sue after being friends with Harry for so long. We didn't plan on it, you understand."

"I'm sure he would want her to be happy. You as well. You're a good man." I said.

We walked back together in silence. When we reached the cruiser, Edward and Carlisle where gone. The lights in the house where off. I lead him straight to the car door.

"Dad. I am sorry I put you through everything. I was just trying to keep you safe."

"Yeah, well, seeing that video, I will sleep sounder knowing you can look after yourself." He popped the door and got inside. "Heck of a throw."

"Good night dad." I said. He nodded and looked at me for the longest time, as if to check if I was really there, or to check that I was really me, still.

And ain't that a question?

I watched as he pulled away in the cruiser, and waited until it was not only out of sight, but out of my range of hearing.

I rushed back into the house.

'Alice!' I called, and ran into the main room. "Alice!" I cried.

The room was empty now, for the visitors must be down in the cellar awaiting daylight in a few hours time. But Jessica was sitting cross legged on the couch, Alice laid out, head in her lap. Jessica was stroking her hair and softly singing.

To my relief, the wound on her was already closing, the fissures all but gone. Her cheeks were pink and her lips full, the dark circles under her eyes a mere shadow. I slid onto the couch next to her, and shot a thankful look at Jessica.

"She's sleeping." Jessica smiled and whispered. "I didn't know we could sleep. But apparently, if we get really low it can happen."

Alice's face was soft, angelic in her torpor. She didn't breathe, but I could see tiny movements of her eyes behind the lids. She was dreaming.

"Will she wake soon?" I whispered.

"Carlisle said it could be a few hours, or a few days. He topped her up with blood, so she will be okay. Quite the thing she did for you."

"I know." I stroked my hand across her smooth, warm rosy cheek. "I don't deserve her."

"Yeah, you do." Jessica said, and pulled away the pillow behind where Alice lay. "Come here, there's room for two."

I slid in behind Alice, wrapping an arm over her waist and placing my head on Jessica's lap. She idly played with my hair as well. I pulled her hand against my cheek and coo-eds softly as she stroked my skin.

"Guessing you didn't take your dear old dad for dinner." Jessica whispered. "How did it go?"

"Better than expected." I said. "But still far too close for comfort. He's dating Sue Clearwater, did you know?"

"Only through small town rumours. What is it with you and future sisters?" She chuckled. I gasped and smacked her leg, but the thought sat with me. I couldn't avoid Leah now. One way or the other I had to speak to her in person. And it wouldn't take them long to realise what I was now that they knew which family I was living with. I only hoped Oz was right and it would break her spell.

Then another thought struck me. Willow knew about magick.

"Big thoughts?" Jessica said, humming as she danced her fingers soothingly across my temples.

"Doncha just miss sleep?" I said. "Just the punctuation of it. Like, okay brain… day is over I am done." I looked up at my sister.

"I could suck out all of your blood if you like? Like sleeping beauty here. I am kinda peckish." Jessica grinned and prodded my lower lip so it made a feint smacking noise as it rebounded. I bit it playfully as she tried again

"What am I, dessert? Go hunt something, and stop munching on the family."

I planted as kiss on Alice's head, groaned and got up. "You're right. Kinda feels weird hunting alone"

"I can go with you." Willow said from above me. I looked up to see her sitting on the edge of the great stairs, her naked feet dangling limply.

"We hunt for animals around here. Humans are forbidden."

"Yeah, Esme told me. S'how you all have golden eyes, right?"

She dropped down silently next to me. Her scent hit me then, sweet, like strawberries. She had showered, combed her tangled ginger hair smooth. She had discarded her ruined clothing too, she now wore grey leggings, and one of Esme's loose sweaters- a deep burgundy one with a wide neck that exposed one of Willow's pale shoulders. The sleeves where tight, extending over her fingers like gloves, and her thumbs poked through two holes. Her choker and the expanse of shoulder made her neck seem all the more long and graceful.

"D'ya think golden eyes would suit me?" She said. I suspected sarcasm, but detected none. She seemed empty now, blank. Like the loss she had experienced had left a void in her. And maybe she genuinely wanted to fill it with something new.

Willow gave a flick of her chin towards the doorway.

I took in a last look at Alice and Jessica on the couch, feeling secure that, for now at least, they were safe.

"Come on then." I said to the strange girl beside me. "We should hurry. Sun is up in a few hours and the helicopters probably drove the prey up the hills."

Willow tilted her head to look at me, a small smile dragging at the side of her mouth. Her dark red eyes gazing at me from beneath her lashes.

"Well, then" she purred "what are we waiting for?"


	18. A Wolf In Wolf's Clothing

Chapter 17

A Wolf in Wolf's Clothing

Our hunt did not go at all as I expected.

I had pictured Willow tagging behind clumsily, clueless to the wild, and me eventually bringing down a kill from which she would share. Instead, she stayed close, silent, always down wind, always hovering in the corner of my vision, so I knew where she was, so I could signal at a glance. She had never hunted animals before, but I made the mistake in thinking that meant she wasn't a hunter. The girl was a predator, through and through.

And though I guided us to the doe and was ready to pounce, it was Willow that brought down our kill- but not the dear- the cougar that had been stalking it instead.

In a blur of deep red and copper, she struck- catching the wild cat mid air, driving it high against the trunk of a hemlock tree. Limbs and claws thrashed as the two of them tumbled down through the boughs until they landed hard on the forest floor.

In an instant, Willow was on top, she caught the last feeble swipe of the animal's paw, and with a victorious grin, she renched the limb and sank with her knee into the cougar's neck, pinning it down. The pop-pop-pop of bones ground apart signalled the end of the fight.

Her big eyes sparkled in the moonlight as she met my stunned gaze, a flick of her head casually inviting me in.

I fell upon the beast beneath her and greedily tore into it. The blood wasn't like that which I had stolen from Alice, not perversely tainted and bitter, but sweet and pure. I drank hungrily.

"That was wild." Willow purred, her face was now so close to mine that flecks from my feeding spattered upon her cheek. I watched it seep in. She kept her eyes on mine as she ever-so-slowly lowered her mouth to the fount of blood, and took a long lick.

"Mmmm, good kitty." She said, her fangs glistening as she smiled.

I watched her face change, her brow scrunching down into a fleshy scowl with little ridges. She was different to us- Aurelian, a different bloodline, Carlilse had said when I asked about the vampires in my sketches. I didn't find her change horrifying at all, in truth the bestial quality it gave her felt more honest, more true to our nature.

I watched in heated fascination as she began to drink, her smile falling from her beautiful lips as she lost herself in the sumptuous pleasure of the blood. I swallowed at the sensuality of her mouth at work. I looked away, and returned to our shared meal in silence.

When we were sated, blood drunk and shuddering with life, we lay on our backs among the broken hemlock boughs and gazed up at the sky. A fine rain had begun to fall, freezing in the air into something that was not quite snow. Wet against my cheeks, not the powdery caress I had only once encountered in my life.

"There is so much sky here" Willow said in awe. "I feel like I have been caged and now the door is open."

"You are from the city?"

"Suburbs. Sunnydale, born and raised. Died and turned." she said in her slow, syrupy drawl. Then she sighed, and rubbed at her face, as if to rub away an unwanted memory.

"What's it like there?"

"On the surface? Boring. A boring Californian suburban nightmare. But scratch that surface? Oh, scratch the surface and it bleeds! A vampire paradise, tunnels and dark places for the day- blood filling our cups, like wine by night. We had people in chains, and we could ride them like ponies." She clucked her tongue.

My mind was fixed on the image of a cup of blood. A memory. I felt my venom begin to ooze from my fangs at the thought of it. A warm night, silent storms, the heady taste…

I shifted uncomfortably at my arousal, and tried to turn my thoughts to something else, but that caused Willow's fingers to graze against mine.

"Sorry." I said, pulling my hand back. She kept hers still.

"But…" Willow sighed, "that was before."

"Before?"

"Before The Slayer and the witch came and tore it down" She sat up slightly, resting on her elbows, tipping her head back as if she was sunbathing in the moonlight. "Whatever remains? Well, I know The Hellmouth calls and shapes all. Who knows what will fill the void?"

"The Mayor. Do you know him?"

The redhead shook her head and chuckled darkly.

"Thankfully, no. But I know _of_ him. We all do. Know to fear him, and be grateful to him. He made the town for us, for The Old Ones, in tribute, in service." she chuckled bitterly and said in a hushed tone "He never said so, but even The Master feared him."

The strangeness of my situation dawned on me then. I was laying by my once enemy, a true vampire, one who had tortured and killed for two years. No different to Victoria, whom I had slain. So similar to Victoria, infact, even in looks.

Moreover, she was my enemy again as a member of Volturi society, a fledgeling born against their laws, a risk to our survival. An Aurelian, whose clan had, possibly, attacked ours.

And yet, by a twist of fate she is by my side, and I feel her pain and her loss. I pieced together that Sandy must have been her childe, and she loved her deeply. I thought of my own childe Karin, out there in Volterra. What was she doing? How had the transformation taken her? Does she feel bonded to me? Abandoned? Did she hate me?

"You still want to… don't you?" She said then.

"What?"

"Hunt humans."

I lay silently for a while, trying to push down the feelings rising in me. I merely nodded.

"Why don't you?" She said.

"Because it's wrong. Because, I don't want to be a monster."

"That's what we are." Willow said. "By definition. M'pretty sure they make monster movies about us."

"But we are not mindless beasts." I said. "We have a choice. We always have a choice. Our choices are what define us."

"When I was turned, I woke up feeling free, powerful, hungry. Like the rules that crushed me down my whole life no longer applied. Those that hurt me would pay. It was my turn. So, you see, for me? It wasn't any choice at all. Do you remember being turned?"

"Yeah." I said. After all, it wasn't long ago. I remember waking up to Alice sitting patiently at my feet, her beautiful smile as she said my name. "It was different for me. I was born into this lifestyle."

Willow turned on her side, propping her head up on one arm, her face hovering close to mine, I could feel her breath on my lips.

"But you have tasted humans?"

I look away.

"Was that your choice?"

"I didn't say it was an easy one." I said. "I am just like you."

"When I was turned, there wasn't a choice. Even so, I know what I would have chosen. One moment I am a boring, sheepish, pathetic little human, bullied at school, ignored by my parents… the next? . An immortal, top of the food chain. A direct childe of The Master, no less. His favored acolyte. Even before I discovered my gift, my magicks… the fledgelings would cower before me." She grinned. "It was intoxicating."

As she spoke I tasted the tang of the blood on her breath, mixed with her distinct strawberry scent. She loomed over me, one of her fingers toying with the soil and twigs close to my chest. Inching closer.

"I was born into power. Power was everything in my world, and I had it." She sighed, and pursed her lips. "Had, being the right tense, I guess. But now? What am I to do now?"

Her features where all too human again, so young and innocent, and filled with grief.

I noticed the silver skeletal dragon coiling about her ear was damaged, the links hanging disjointed. The Aurelian Crest just a small disc on her tragus, a dead star.

I look at the Cullen crest on my cuff, the proud lion, the hand, the three thingies on the... treff... trefel... swirly thing. I slid back from her, drawing myself up onto my elbow.

"You could stay. With us. You have a choice." I said. "In our coven, power means nothing. No power struggles. We support each other. It's a family. You could have that too."

Willow rolled her eyes.

"Bored now." She said, and slumped back. Her eyes looking up at the moon. She let out a breath and rubbed at her face again.

"You feel different, away from The Hellmouth. You feel things long buried. Guilt. Loss. Remorse?" I said. "Is that it?"

"Boo hoo me." she said, but the barb rang empty. She wiped at her cheek again and blinked.

"Even if…" she said, "Even, for arguments sake, I did… and I chose..." she said. She twisted up her face in a scowl. "forget it."

"There are more like us, Willow. The Denali Clan are vegetarian too." I said.

Willow sat upright, curling her arms around her knees.

"Thanks for taking me out to dinner." She said. "This was fun."

Willow suprised me with a sudden peck on my cheek. She then stood, dusting down her grey leggings and stepping away.

"Welp, best be getting me back to the cellar. Sun's-a-coming up. I am a redhead. It's _murder_ on my complexion."

There was still much I needed to know for the coming fight, but I didn't want to push too hard. She was, well, I am not sure you could say 'vulnerable', more like balanced precariously.

After all, the trauma of her loss was fresh and as raw as the wound on her face, and I imagine in her place I would be a mess of conflicting ideas and emotions. I let it go

We made our way down the hillside, skirting the river, and coming into the thicker cedar woods that smelled sharp and fresh. The moon was waxing gibbous above us, and the first glow of dawn blue tinted the horizon.

The wolf howl stopped me dead in my tracks. Willow froze too, lowering her stance. A second wolf call came further down the hill. Another came, and then, far to the east, several answering calls. I heard the distress in the howls, the agitation.

"What is it?"

"Our neighbors. Close to the boundary." I said. "Something's wrong. Come on, we need to get you safe."

She looked confused, almost mesmerised as she looked into the darkness of the far woods from which the calls came. I turned to see a huge black wolf high on the cliff top on the far side of the river. It was looking at us silently.

"We need to go. Now."

I snatched up her hand and pulled her along with me, away from the gathering pack.


	19. Descent

Chapter 18

Descent

Willow and I made it back to the house with only a scant few minutes before the first rays of sun tore across the landscape setting the snow-covered mountain tips into what seemed blazing beacons of pink light.

Even from the relative shade of the kitchen, this caused Willow to wince, hiss and raise a burgundy sleeve to her eyes. I opened the door to the cellar, and she slipped past me and into the merciful shade.

I could only imagine what direct sunlight would feel like for her.

Willow turned back to me from the dark, her face filled with a strange mix of emotions, breathing rapidly, as if she had forgotten what she and I were. I hesitated for a second as she raised a hand to my cheek, her fingertips barely ghosting along the flesh. I pulled away sharply and closed the door on her.

Trembling, I backed against the metal counter that ran along the centre of the kitchen, and sat on one of the stools. The sunlight spilled over the windows behind me, forming a razor edge between me and the door, which seemed to me to divide our worlds.

I had the urge to sling the bolts across the door, barricade it, then burn the house to the ground. I let out a puff of air and buried my hands into my face, slumping forward onto the cool steel surface.

What was I doing? Trying to save Willow from the darkness? I guess I had justified it to myself as a selfless, noble thing, carrying on from Esme's care, but I knew I was kidding myself. I large part of it was selfish, pure and simple. I had to admit to myself that I was attracted to her, not just physically, not just sexually, but something deeper, perhaps even darker. In a way she reminded me of blood.

She was like blood. Deep red eyes and lips, made all the richer for the Burgundy top she wore, and on the outfit before that, the bolt of red about her breast. The shock of red hair, that glowed like flame as she moved in for the kill. The wanton way she went about feeding, the moans…

I felt the tightening in my chest, the answering call low in my body. I stood and took a breath.

Willow was temptation for me. She called to my darker nature. For all my talk of not wanting to be a monster, I knew secretly I did. She jeopardised the good in me.

I felt tugged in two directions, Alice and the light, Willow and the dark.

No, that was too simple. Because before, in Alice's room, Willow had begged me not to go to The Hellmouth, that it wanted me, that it would change me. She herself was struggling to pull back from that darkness. And as much as I was tempted by Willow, helping her was like helping myself.

Goodness is not the absence of temptation, but not acting on it.

My eyes are golden now.

I stood, and, glancing back at the cellar door, I went to find Alice.

The house seemed ours again, The Cullens, as the morning fully formed. Even the clinic too, for the critically injured Volturi Guard, Eric and Isadora where now situated in the cellar.

On the bed lay Alice, which made the room feel one step closer towards being mine. She was deep in torpor, her face softened with the innocence of sleep.

Esme sat in vigil over her. And she greeted me with a warm smile, but her eyes hinted at the worrying within.

I sat next to her on the single chair and she drew me up into her arms. We lay there silently watching the tiny vampire sleep. I wished there was a machine beeping away, giving me some kind of sign of life instead of the deathly stillness.

"She's really out of it, huh." I whispered, just to fill the silence.

"Carlisle said it could be days."

"D'ya think if I give her a kiss she will wake up? Or does that only work with charming princes?" I said.

Esme chuckled softly, and wrapped her arm around me, nestling me into her shoulder. I watched Alice, mapping out every detail of her features, trying to etch them into my memory.

I said, "She made me do it. I am grateful she did. She saved Charlie. Again." I let out a breath of laughter "He doesn't know it, but he has a little tiny, annoying guardian angel."

"It's okay Buffy. She is safe."

"She isn't. None of us are." I said. "I have to confront The Mayor. Take the gift stealer out of the picture. Perhaps The Slayer too."

"The Volturi Guard couldn't stop them."

"I can." I said. "I have to."

"We need to regroup. The Volturi-"

"Got their asses handed to them. Esme, Alice saw Rosalie and Emmett die in her vision. I can't take them with me. If the gift stealer gets Edward's gift, she would be unstoppable. Jessica is not safe among humans, and cannot fight. You and Carlisle are needed here to care for the survivors. That just leaves me."

"It's suicide." She said.

"So is just waiting." I said.

I reluctantly pulled myself free from the cozy embrace. I planted a long kiss on Alice's head and silently said my goodbyes.

"Tell her..." I said. "... You know."

Esme nodded sadly.

I reminded myself that, when all this was over, if I survived, part of my buckets of free time should be spent getting a helicopter license.

Alice's Porsche had to suffice. By my estimates, it should take 16 hours to get to Sunnydale. If, that is, I drove like a mortal, which I had no intention of doing.

Forks peeled back away from me in a drizzling blur of green, and soon I was screaming along the 101 to Aberdeen.

The sun broke through the clouds as I reached Salem, and even with the reprieve my diet gave me from it, it still gnawed at my brain. I fished in the glovebox for the dark glasses I knew Alice kept there. And that is where I found the polished locust wood stake, wrapped in a slip of paper that smelled of Alice.

"Buffy, I don't know why I am not beside you at this moment, and that terrifies me. I see glimpses, but not the story. And if I can't change the path that brings you here, alone, know that I tried, know that I have loved you with all the time that I was given. Fight well, my brave Slayer. -Alice."

Oh god, she thought she would be dead. She thought the only way I would be alone was that she was dead. I let out a shuddering breath and wiped at my eyes.

I slipped the stake into my boot. The letter I folded and slipped into my top. It would be closest to my heart.

...

The jolly sign said "Welcome To Sunnydale: Enjoy your stay", and I fought the urge to plough it down.

It was next to a stretch of road that fed down the hills into valley itself, and there was a small picnic area and scenic look out spot. It would give me a view of the whole town, so I pulled over and cut the engine.

My body should ache from the drive, but instead it was humming. It was around 10 pm by my reckoning- Alice had yet to set the clock in the Porsche- and the moon looked down on me through the polluted air, waxing ominously closer to full.

Sunnydale spread out beneath me, a long dark rectangle of houses snaking down to an industrial port to the east. The cranes loomed over it like decaying monsters. To the north east, I could make out a small airport runway.

Of the town itself, I couldn't see much. The streetlights where little flames of orange in the black, which reminded me of the fissures in slow flowing lava. There were few concentrations of neon lights, one to the north, closer to my side, which I assumed was a mall or main street. Strangely, I could see many church steeples amongst the darkest patches.

Taking a broader view, I could see how the land step in nine concentric circles, like the ground had dropped in stages, tugged down and down into a pit somewhere near the center.

I felt it then, as my eyes fell upon the deepest part of the town. It was like molasses rolling over my nerves. I shuddered with a strange sort of pleasure and licked my dry lips. I drew a deep breath in of the sweet night air.

I remember once, as a child, visiting a carnival with my mother. By midday, I was sugared up and buzzing with excitement from the rides. She insisted we ate, and took me to the section dedicated to food caravans. The air was sweet with cotton candy, rich with the meaty fat hissing from the hot plates, the onions sizzling. My insides where a giddy whirl from the rides, and about me the music jangled punctuated by the screams from the rollercoaster.

Sunnydale felt exactly like that.

I got back into the car, the engine growling into life. I sat for a minute in silence, feeling the rumbling.

I realised I had been idly stroking my fingers across my wrist cuff. I looked at it, at the lion rampant.

I suddenly felt more alone than ever before. One girl in all the world.

I fixed my eyes on the town, flipped the handbrake and pulled the car back onto the road.

I descended into Sunnydale.


	20. Spider Whispers

Chapter 19

Spider Whispers

I found a small gas station shortly after, and I pulled in to get a map. I had already filled the tank at Ventura, and though she was a greedy beast, Alice's car wasn't thirsty at the moment.

Nor was I, thankfully.

The crucifix on the door was the first sign that anything was wrong in the town. It didn't bother me in the slightest, so I pushed the door open to the small shop. It stank of humans, bait, gasoline, dust and garlic. I held my breath and entered.

The cashier was hidden behind a metal cage, to which was fixed several small crucifixes and a string of garlic. I could just make out her young face, round asian features and short jagged hair with a purple patch. She was watching me cautiously, her breath held, her heart speeding. She lowered her magazine.

I placed the map under the slot and some cash. Then I spotted a newspaper called 'The Sunnydale Press.' I added that to the pile, and for some perverse reason, a Twinky.

"Hello." I said. She winced and looked down cautiously at the money, hesitating to take it. I pushed it deeper into the window and stepped back. "It's okay. I don't bite."

"Sorry. It's just…"

"Anemia." I added, when she seemed unconvinced, and I took off my shades. "See? My pupils are not red."

She swallowed and let out a sigh.

"So, you know about… them."

"Oh yeah." I said. "Sorry, but do you know where Revello Drive is?"

"Just back down that way, take a left on Jefferson, right on State, if you hit Restfield cemetery, you have gone too far."

I nodded and gave her my thanks. She poked my purchases back out in a quick motion, pulling her hand back. I took them, nodded again and stepped away from the girl. Truth be told, any of us could easily rip the cage to shreds in seconds. I didn't have the heart to tell her.

The garlic worked though, I couldn't get away from the pungent, eye stinging smell fast enough.

I tossed the Twinky in the bin as I got into the car.

I had passed two graveyards as I followed the girls instructions. That made four graveyards since the welcome sign. I knew, because each and every time I passed one, I had the strangest feeling. It felt like a faint tugging on my bones, rat-a-tat little tugs, tugging me towards them. Like my bones knew where they should be- like they were being called to rest.

Willow had described the place perfectly when she had called it a 'suburban nightmare'. It was all picket fences, and rows of houses, each painted in faded candy colors, each with gardens guarded by plastic gnomes, cracked cheap flamingos or for sale signs.

Nobody was out on the streets, nobody walking their dogs. Few house lights where on. The garbage wasn't being collected, it was piling up at the street corners. I sensed no animals, no birds; the only movements came from sprinklers and newspaper tumbleweeds.

As I passed the second street, I smelled blood on the breeze.

My first impression of 1630 Revello drive was that it seemed far too large a house for a single woman with no family. I felt a stab of guilt at the idea that, perhaps, she had envisioned that I would visit her. I wondered if she had my room picked out for me, hours spent picking out the furnishings.

Well, I was visiting now, I guess.

The street was silent but for the breeze hissing through the huge evergreen trees that hung over the house. The lawn about the straight path to the door was clipped so precise I could imagine someone kneeling close, using tiny scissors.

The political sign made my stomach flip. It was large, mounted on two white painted posts driven into the lawn. It said "Mayor Wilkins III: I Keep My Campaign Promises". He smiled back at me from the picture, the same picture Veronica had given me for him.

I made my way between the two wooden pillars that framed the entrance and up the steps to the door. It was of a warm colored wood with three small rectangular windows set in a diagonal line. I couldn't see any lights inside.

I rang the doorbell.

The house was silent.

I rang again.

Still nothing.

Nobody was home.

I walked back to the car, unsure of what to do next. Roam the streets looking for The Slayer? I didn't think that wise. If there was to be a confrontation, I would prefer I had the advantage of surprise. I hadn't even had the opportunity to get Alice to sketch her from Edwards reading of the Volturi thoughts. I was going in blind.

_This one has fire._

Words from a dream, long ago. It occurred to me then that maybe I had seen The Slayer's face. I recalled a Slayer Dream I had in Volterra. It showed me a fight on a cliff, bloody and savage, of hands battling over a stake, a girl who was me, but who was not me- her face shifting too and fro. I tried to summon the image back, tried to capture it afresh.

Brown wavy hair, pallid caucasian skin. Brown eyes, doe like, angled down at the sides, a thin, sharp nose, full lips on a mocking, dimpled smile, split and bloody, a strong jaw and brow. I felt something slither through me as I pictured her, something sharp and ugly, tainted, lost. I shook the vision from my mind for the feeling it would burn me.

As I turned back to the car, I was shocked to see a woman sitting on the roof, head cocked to one side, piercing red eyes observing me intently from beneath a long sweep of black hair.

_Black hair. _Edward had said.

I snatched the stake from my boot, and fell into a fighting stance.

The woman chuckled and squealed, clapping her hands together like a child at her birthday party.

"Sister, it is you! It is! Oh, the stars have been greedy of late, just whispers, little spider whispers. Naughty. But here you are, as they said."

She poured off the roof and stalked forward, a thin white victorian dress swishing as she moved. She fixed her eyes on my chest, and gracefully pointed a sharp claw.

"Oh, and little sister's only had spider whispers too… she cries tears of ink." She said, her English accent thick.

"Drusilla." I said. She looked baffled at this for a moment, but then a toothy grin soon followed. She scrunched up her sharp nose and snapped at the air.

"Smart one, you are. Bright and shiny like a button. But you don't know where mummy is though." She said, and let fly a dark stuttering laugh. "But I do."

"What have you done to her?" I growl, tightening my grip on the stake, I check my flanks for The Slayer.

"Not a thing." She grinned, stepping closer, staring at me like I was a curiosity in a museum. "Always strange, isn't it? And you would know- seeing a thing from a vision in the flesh." She hissed the last word.

"Where is she?"

"Oh, sister. Mummy lives on The Hellmouth now. From beneath you, it devours." Drusilla said in a faux whisper, leaning forward so she was inches from my face. "She lies with the wolf."

She sniffed me and chuckled. "Another thing you would know." She stepped back and gave a little spin in her dress. "Buffy put the kettle on. She will be here soon for tea."

"What do you want?"

"Just to see you once, my sister." She said, her face suddenly sullen and sad. "Before it eats… you… all… up."

"You saved Alice. From Angelus." I said.

Her face fell and she pressed a finger to her lips.

"No, no sister dear! Get the cotton, stitch up your lips nice and tight, or we will all be spanked. Secrets can be sweet as kisses, don't you know? Little sister is in dreams now, but it's just nightmares for you and me."

Drusilla flinched way as she was illuminated by blindingly bright car headlights. I turned to see a Jeep Cherokee pulling up into the drive. I recognized my mother in the driver's seat.

In a panic, I moved to protect her from Dru, but the vampire had vanished. I had her scent, though, like bitter tea and dead flowers, I could track her. She had rushed away into the bushes and up across the roof of the neighboring house. But, I was confident my mother was safe now, at least, from Drusilla. I drew back against a tree.

Joyce was at the door now, smartly dressed in a slate grey pant suit, she was fumbling with her keys, a box file under her arm. I moved to the first pillar, hesitating, it wasn't too late, I could vanish like Drusilla.

The box file hit the floor.

"Buffy?"

"Mom."

In a flash I was wrapped in a hug that pushed the air from me. I tightened my mouth, trying not to breathe, but her scent reached me nonetheless. Blood, yes, but something much stronger. A scent that was powerful, strangely familiar, comforting, yet kinda off, sharp… crackling in my nostrils like popping candy upon the tongue.

"Mom?"

"Oh my little girl. My baby. It is you! Where have you been?"

I hugged her as best I could, holding it for several Mississippis I am sure… but I had to pull away from the scent, it was affecting me in a weird way, I staggered, almost drunkenly, shaking my head. What was happening?

"It's really you! Buffy! Oh my, look at you!"

"Mom… I… need… I…"

"Oh baby, I missed you. It has been so, so long." She said, her hands hot on my icy cheeks. "But you came home. You came home to me. Oh baby girl, you look so exhausted. Let's go inside."

In my haze, I let her pull me by the hand to the door. She unlocked it, scooped up the box file and hurried inside. I followed.

The blow sent me hissing back in pain, clutching my forehead and nose. The air of the doorway had thickened like iron, sticking to my skin like hot molten sugar. The Ward of Saint Dymphna. I growled, and pawed at my skin.

Joyce stood still in the doorway, looking at me with an expressionless face. She just stood there, motionless.

"Mom, I… I can explain."

"You don't have to dear. It's... it's just a surprise." She said, and a small, pained smile flickered across her lips. "Quite the surprise."

She drew in a long, tired breath and put the box file down on the counter beside her, and placed the keys upon it. She tugged the jacket of her pant suit straight, and breathed out. Then she nodded to herself.

"Buffy, my darling daughter… I invite you in."


	21. The Tea

Chapter 20

The Tea

Mom led me through the silent, darkened house to a large provincial style kitchen.

I could easily make out the rooms beyond the hall in this level of darkness, even in the meagre amount of moonlight that crept past the dense foliage of the trees that bordered the house and in through the curtains. What I saw didn't sit right.

Joyce Summers never grew out of her art student days. Even when she took on the role of Hank Summer's socialite wife, she retained that flair for the expressive and unorthodox. The house I grew up in was cluttered with gaudy, passionate, challenging art that I mostly tuned out.

This house spoke of another woman altogether. It was spacious, expensive, spotlessly clean, painfully neat and tastefully decorated in a homely, conservative manner that seemed to leap from a homemaker magazine. So much beige.

That isn't to say there wasn't art; but the few pieces on display seemed muted and old. I could make out crude wooden masks, primitive effigies, polished puzzle boxes and framed yellowing pages scrawled with geometric designs in russet ink.

I tried to scan for anything familiar to me, anything at all to connect this woman before me to the woman I knew. To my discomfort, I found something.

The living room mantelpiece and the wall above it was a shrine entirely dedicated to me. All my trophies and ribbons from my ice skating and cheerleading days sat amongst candles and a large number of framed pictures and newspaper clippings. The photographs where a map of my life, from birth to… well, I guess my death, since I could see a clipping announcing the searches for my body had been called off.

I felt a cold, rolling sensation in my gut. I looked away and hurriedly followed Joyce into the kitchen.

Mom snapped on the harsh lights, making me wince at first, but she immediately dimmed them to all but a soft orange glow. She looked back at me questioningly, and I nodded my approval.

In the center of the kitchen was a spacious island, with several white wooden bar stools. Upon it was an artfully arranged bowl of fruit, some housekeeping magazines and an expensive looking block of knives in pale wood. Above this central feature was a metal frame from which copper pots hung on steel hooks.

Mom flipped the switch on the kettle and then leaned back against the counter, staring at me with a small grin.

I caught myself standing in that stiff, unnerving way vampires do, and I so I shifted uncomfortably, not really knowing what to do with myself.

"Oh, please, do sit" she gestured to one of the stools at the island, "do I have to invite you with that too?" She chuckled.

"Just doors." I said. "S'far as I know. Maybe windows too. Definitely doors." I said rubbing my aching face.

I took a seat at the island, furthest from mom and placed my forearms down on the table in my best impression of a relaxed slouch.

"I could hardly believe it when your father called late last night and told me they found you. I have been on cloud 9 all day." she said. "I was hoping you would be ready to call soon, but this? This is wonderful."

"I would have visited sooner, but, things got… well, complicated."

"So I see." She said.

I didn't know what to say, to be honest I was having a hard time processing the invitation, and everything that meant.

"Charlie didn't mention that you were… does he know? What you are?"

"I… uh… I mean he figured out The Slayer thing is true. Was true. You know Charlie, always the cop." I said, to which she let out a bemused snort. "But I am not sure if he knows about… the other thing. Suspects, maybe."

"Always the cop." She said.

"But you know… about…"

"The other thing?" She said; that little grin remained in place.

My undead ears could hear the kettle element heating up, the faintest squeal of the plastic, the click-click-clicking as the metal expanded. She kept staring at me with that little smile. I shifted and cleared my throat.

"For how long?" I said.

"Just after you… left." She said. "When did you...?"

"Uh, Not long ago. It was on St. Marcus day… so uh… April 25th. It's all still new." I said.

"So do we move your birthday? January 19th or April 25th?"

"I… hadn't thought about it." I said.

I could hear the water within rolling and hissing.

The kettle clicked off. As if a spell was broken, mom turned sharply, snatched the kettle from the cradle and poured the boiling water.

As she prepared the tea, I looked about the home she had made herself. She had changed dramatically since we said our goodbyes at the airport. I had too, but I had assumed my change would shock her, unnerve her, perhaps even hurt her. I wasn't prepared for the reverse.

My fingers traced over the patterns on my leather cuff, and I wondered if Alice had woken up yet.

Mom sat down opposite me. She hummed a little tune as she set down her mug of tea and a small plate of gingerbread cookies. Then, to my surprise, she placed a mug before me.

"Mom, I can't drink… " I paused as the smell hit me. It was faded, with little life force, but unmistakable.

"Mom. This is blood."

"Well, I assumed you wouldn't want tea" She said, and nipped at a cookie with little white teeth.

"Mom, this is human blood." I said.

"Mmm hmm" she said, swallowing her cookie. "AB negative, under 20 years. The good stuff, I am told." She said with a wink.

"Mom, why do you even have this?"

"A good hostess should always keep a well stocked pantry."

"Human. Blood."

"Yes, well, politics in Sunnydale being what it is, entertaining guests can be a rather… interesting experience."

"Politics? Mom… what happened to you?"

She chuckled brightly and then sipped from her mug as she considered the question.

"I guess, I grew up." She said. "Had to happen sooner or later." Her brow furrowed "Do you need me to heat that up a bit more for you?"

My attention turned back to the mug, which I realized I had taken hold of. The aroma was growing, opening out, softly stroking my sobriety.

"Don't be ashamed." She said. "I have seen it all before."

"I… I…" I swallowed, my fingers curling around the mug, which seemed to be growing in my hands.

I don't know where the words came from, but I heard myself shakily say "I am a vegetarian. I mean… I don't drink human blood. Animal only." I pushed the mug away. Not far away, mind you, but in the vague sense of away.

"Oh, I didn't know, I am awfully sorry." She said, snatching it up. "I have pig. Just give me a moment."

The thick splattering sound as she emptied it down the sink made my mouth fill with venom. I closed my eyes and fought the urge to claw my way over the counter.

Joyce retrieved a thick plastic bag from the refrigerator, like one of those designer soup bags. She read the label and slipped it into the microwave.

"A lot really has happened since you… while you were away. A few months after I arrived, I found two little children. They had been ritualistically murdered. No one in authority seemed to want to do anything about it. I had to do something, so I started MOO."

"Moo?"

"Mothers Opposed to The Occult. Looking back, I should have given the name more thought. We campaigned against the Mayor, made sweeping changes, confiscated many dangerous magick books and artifacts, we got things done."

"Wow. That sounds… great."

"Actually it was a disaster. It got way out of hand. But, I learned a lot. And it felt good, empowering, like I made a difference. I liked that. After the divorce and what with you… uh... well…It felt good. I realised there was more to life than art."

"That's great mom." I managed. There was something sobering about the casual way she talked about it all- demons, murders, blood.

"As it turns out, the children weren't children at all, but a creature mentally manipulating the townsfolk- myself included. Still, my campaign, and my speeches impressed, and, well, you know the old adage, "if you can't beat 'em…". He showed me the whole truth of what was going on here, the inner workings, what lies beneath."

Her eyes sparkled in the dim orange light, and a small, knowing smile crawled across her beautiful features. A smile filled with secrets. I felt a shudder travel down my spine, and there it was again, that dark molasses feeling creeping along my nerves. Inside of me.

"He?"

"Richard Wilkins, The Mayor."

"You work for The Mayor?"

"Mmm hmmm." She said. The microwave pinged. Joyce reached out again and placed her hand reassuringly on mine.

"Did you know the Deputy Mayor?"

Her little grin crawled into a wide, wide, knowing smile.

"I know the Deputy Mayor _very_ well."

A new mug of blood was set before me.

The scent had a sharp tang, similar to human but thinned, less salty, less appealing. I cautiously took a sip. It had a plasticy taste, followed by weird greasy aftertaste, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant. It reminded me a little of bacon fat. Despite the taste, it felt good going down.

Mom seemed pleased that I had accepted her hospitality, and I thought it best to keep overly full as I would be around humans, so I gulped down more.

Mom returned to her mug of tea, completely unphased.

"Mom, were you dating the deputy mayor?"

Joyce let free a peel of laughter and shook her head.

"No, just sleeping with them." She said, eyes glittering with mischief as she sipped the tea.

"Mom?"

"Buffy, I _am_ the deputy Mayor."


	22. 5150

Chapter 21

5150

_Ellen Marcia Clinic, California, 1997_

"So, Buffy, honey, what is happening right now is that you have been assessed by the doctor, and he has written you up as a 5150. That means you have to stay with us for 72 hours. Do you understand?"

The woman was squatting next to me, one hand on the empty plastic seat to my side. I guess she was doing it to come down to my level, be less threatening, or perhaps so she could get away from me quickly- I didn't know, I didn't care. At least she blocked the view. My hands smell of gasoline I need to wash.

"Buffy?"

"Yeah, 72 hours. Assessed." I mumble after a pause to clear my throat. My knuckles have hardly any skin left on them, the hospital's long fluro lights make little patterns on the glossy red flesh.

"So now honey, we have all the paperwork done, so in a few minutes some men will come and take you inside. Now, I know they are big guys so can be a bit intimidating, but they aren't going to hurt you. They are lovely, really. They just keep everyone safe. Buffy, honey, just follow their instructions okay?"

I nodded numbly, and then watched the black ash flutter down from my hair. Lothos, perhaps. He was the last one I staked. But there where so many, so perhaps it belonged to several of them. They were all dead now. More dead.

"Now, your dad spoke to his lawyers, and he-"

"He's not my dad."

"-said... sorry, what?"

"Hank's not my dad. Step father."

I look up at the man in question standing between me and my mom at the reception. About fifty meters away. He isn't looking at me. Neither of them are.

"Oh, I am sorry Buffy, my mistake. Your step father spoke to his lawyers, and they recommend you stay with us a bit longer, which will help your case. So we have a lovely room by the gardens waiting for you after you get through your 5150 period."

"Gardens." I say, for some reason I cannot fathom. No one here knows the danger they are in, look at them going about their business, ignorant of what lurks out there, in the darkness, waiting to devour them. I shouldn't be in here. I need to be out there. To protect them, I must be out there.

"You want my advice kiddo? Next three days is gonna suck for you. Just behave and roll with it, and it gets much nicer when you get our of high observation into the private clinic."

"Right." I said. Mom glanced my way, briefly, long enough to see me staring, not long enough to catch my eye. She looks… I don't know exactly what... tired? Embarrassed? Guilty? Her look of faux concern isn't fooling anyone, that's for sure.

"Where is Pike? Is Pike okay?" I said.

"I'm sorry, honey, I don't know who that is." the woman said, standing up. I immediately forget what she looks like. I see them now, coming for me. Two sacks of muscle stuffed into scrubs, vaguely shaped into men, one pushing a wheelchair that is almost comically tiny compared to him. Mom sees them too, she watches them until they are before me. Her eyes flick to mine, then down. She turns away to greet the doctor type talking to Hank, a dark skinned man with a false smile. He would make a good vampire.

My escorts noticeably tense up as I sharply stand. As I sit into the wheelchair I feel one of their meat paws push me down firmly. I fight the urge to break each and every one of his fingers.

When I look back to my mom, she is finally looking at me. She mouths the words "be safe". She gives me a weak smile and an even weaker wave goodbye as they wheel me away.

…

_Revello Drive, __Sunnydale. Present._

"You are The Deputy Mayor of Sunnydale?"

"Say it again. I hear the ninth time really is the charm." Mom said, sardonically. She sipped her tea and then said "Honestly, I am surprised you think so little of me that you don't think I could…"

"No, no! It's not that… it's just, a surprise, mom. A big surprise. A surprise of the big."

"Been a night of those."

"Seriously, this is _not_ going anywhere even near the ballpark of how I thought this was going to go." I said, mostly to myself "So, uh... you… work for The Mayor."

"I like to think 'with', we both serve the people of Sunnydale after all."

"Yeah, but mom, you serve them for dinner."

"Sacrifices have to be made for the greater good."

"Mom!"

"Oh, come now, Buffy, you are a… with what you are now… you surely must understand. It's a cruel world. Dog eat dog. You just need to pick which dog you want to be." She said. "Top dog, or… hot dog."

"Mom, Mayor Wilkins isn't a dog, he is pure evil."

"He is a visionary, Buffy. You have no idea of the amazing things he has accomplished, or what he has sacrificed."

"People, I am guessing. Maybe babies."

Joyce waved her hand in a sickeningly casual way. I could almost hear the words 'eggs' and 'omelette'.

"So, that means you replaced Alan Finch after he was murdered."

"How did you know about that?" she said.

"Mom, I don't like this. Any of this. We need to get you out of Sunnydale. Like, now."

"It's sweet you are worried about me. You know I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Alan was a complete idiot. I don't plan on making the same mistakes he did."

"Mom, you don't understand…Sunnydale is on a thing called a Hellmouth, and I think it is affecting you."

"How..." she said, visibly shaken for a moment before her composure slid back down like a visor, "Where did you hear about The Hellmouth?" She said.

"Remember my nightmares?"

Joyce's expression stiffened. She gave an almost imperceivable nod which flickered anger up in me like sparks. I swallowed back what I wanted to say.

"Well, turns out? They were visions of the future. Part of The Slayer gig. I got nightly front row seats to all the big bad going on around me."

"You see the future?" She said this in a manner that unnerved me slightly. Perhaps it was the present tense, or the feeling like cogs where rolling in her skull that I didn't want rolling. Not in anyone's skull but definitely not my own mothers.

"Mom, Mayor Wilkins founded Sunnydale... he built it-"

"He built Sunnydale on The Hellmouth for a very good reason Buffy." she said. "Trust me. A very, very good reason."

"You know?"

"Yes." She said with a smirk, plucking another gingerbread cookie from the tray.

"How are you okay with this? Any of this? How can you just sit there knowing... knowing what I am. "

Mom paused for a moment, eyes flickering shut at a memory. When she opened them, they where glossy.

"After you dissapeared, I hoped. I hoped you would come back. The day I heard reports that The Slayer was in Sunnydale, was one of the happiest in my life. My heart leapt. I knew I would see you again. But then we met, when she was not you, I realised you were gone. Forever gone. That I would never see my baby girl again." She spoke with a tremble in her lips. "But here you are. Buffy, my sweet girl… here you are. So yes, I am absolutely okay with this"

"You met the slayer?" I said.

"Oh yes. Kendra Young, beautiful girl, colored, came all the way from Jamaica just to be here. Shy. Poor thing. She didn't last long. Less than, what? Three weeks." She hummed to herself. "No, because the women's day charity fundraiser… so, two, two weeks. Tragic." She popped the last of cookie into her mouth and dusted her hands.

"And the current Slayer? Have you met her?"

"Kennedy? No. Not yet. Our reports place her and her Watcher are in Cleveland. Good family, old money." She said. "Not our problem, yet."

"Mom, please. This isn't you. The Hellmouth is bad news. Ultimate bad news. I need to get you some place safe."

"Nowhere is safe, Buffy, you of all people should know that. And you are very wrong about The Hellmouth. Terrible name. We really need to rebrand it. It's merely a beacon, a signal to those like yourself. It says welcome home. Sunnydale _is_ your home."

I became aware of that sensation I had been trying to push back, that sensation like excitation on a warm summer night- the scent like cotton candy, joyful screams on the air.

Mom's scorchingly hot hand on the back of mine shook me to my senses.

"I have your room made up." She said nervously. "I kept it, even after I found out… well, good thing I did. I think you will adore it. It has a lovely view of the garden."

A shudder passed down my spine, and I found myself gazing at my mug, unable to speak. My marble fingers clinking against the ceramic.

"Don't worry, we can stock up on whatever blood you like first thing tomorrow. Terry's on Rugels has an extensive range. Animal exotics, demon types you name it. Don't worry about the cost. Only the best for my girl."

But then her face fell at my 'deer in the headlights' look, "you are staying, aren't you?"

"I… I… have someone waiting for me, in Forks."

"Oh. I see." she said. "Is that someone Leah Clearwater by any chance?"

The name stabbed into my gut like cold steel. Because yes, Leah _was_ waiting for me. She was waiting as we spoke. And she would wait for me forever because I had abandoned her. Was she there now, staring out a window at the waxing moon?

Had Alice woken yet?

"It _is_ Leah, right?"

_Secrets can be as sweet as kisses, don't you know?_

I felt fire burning around that cold steel sensation in my gut, and blew out a breath as if I could extinguish it. Yes, I had abandoned Leah Clearwater. I couldn't even speak to her face to face. I pictured a moon in the void, without a planet to spin around, or a sun to warm it. Cold, dead, waiting.

I had to finish what I came here for. And I had to get back and make things right for Leah. Somehow.

"It's okay Buffy. You don't need to be ashamed. Your father told me, about… ", she waved her hand again, "Your lifestyle choice."

"My… wazznahuh?"

"And I accept it. Heck, it even proved handy for some minority constituents. I could talk to them at their level."

I blinked, despite myself.

"Look, at least stay for a few days?Maybe three? For me? Leah will be fine. And you know what they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

''You know, I remember when you two met. You must have both been, what, four? We had an inflatable play pool. She complained it was stupid, it wasn't as good as her river and then she popped it with a nail, I think it was. Do you remember?"

I didn't. I tried to look back, but couldn't get past another memory. I shook my head.

"Queer isn't it? How unexpectantly things turn out." Mom said, tiredly pushing herself up to standing. "Well, I have a big day tomorrow. Come on, I will show you your room."

I followed, somewhat numb at the swirl and bubble of sensations inside me- a churn of guilt, shock, confusion and, oooh, even more confusion. Oh, and something else, darker, more bitter lurking beneath. It was something I felt desperate to grasp but unable to even know what I was looking for. So, I found myself led up the beige stairs and down a beige corridor to the fourth and last room.

"This is you." Mom said, walking across the room to draw the curtains. "Yes, I think these are dark enough. No sunlight. Plus the tree outside blocks most of it. Don't want my precious daughter roasted to a crisp come morning, do we?"

I snorted a half hearted laugh. Drusilla's finger to her lips came to mind as I thought about explaining that I was mostly immune to sunlight. Plus I was too tired to care.

"Goodnight my darling girl" mom said, kissing my forehead. "It is so good to have you here."

She held me then, and that strange crackling dizziness took me again as I drew in her scent- but that was something to ponder later. The bed did look very big and very comfy. Plus, I was surrounded by familiar things. It was so much like my other room. My posters, my pictures, my old toys.

As soon as mom closed the door on me, I flopped onto the bed. I yawned- the Sun must be coming up soon.

I pictured Willow, Tara and The Volturi huddled in the wine cellar. I pictured Leah gazing out the window to the moon. I pictured Drusilla stalking off to a tomb, grinning at her secrets, drawn by that rat-a-tat tug on her bones.

And I thought of Alice, laying in torpor on the bed. Silent as death.

And yet, it was all dropping away, the pain, the angst- mercifully fading as I faded, drifting off into a peaceful sleep.

And the funny thing was, it never once occurred to me that immortals do not need to sleep.


	23. Lineage

Chapter 22

Lineage

I knew where I was by the smell alone, so I clamped my lips shut and waited for the urge to breathe. When it hit me, that clawing desperation to fill my lungs, only then did I allow myself to open my eyes; to make it real. I was alone in that same old white room with safety corners, that stank of detergent and faded cigarettes.

I groaned as my entire body throbbed from the medication, those mortal muscles, fragile and fleshy. I felt like a balloon too near a needle.

The floor was cold to my foot, slightly greasy and all together too solid. I shuffled to the door and pressed myself to it, arms folded before my face, stretching myself back into something that reminded me of the girl I was. The wood smelled devilishly real.

Unsure of where I was heading, I stepped out into the observation ward corridor, and perhaps out of a sick sense of habit, I padded towards the common area.

The air was sharp with the stench of urine from the combined shower and toilet to my left- no doubt some new guy had missed again, forcing the girls on the ward to clean up before they could use it, or step in puddles with bare feet. I hated all the new comers, they way they came and went, but somehow my behavior ended up keeping me here. I secretly hated them all, but I hated the new men most of all.

It didn't surprise me at all when Nurse Vanth looked up from behind the thick glass of the octagonal viewing station and wore Drusilla's toothy smile. In here the vampire's eyes were a piercing blue like cold death. It seemed more chilling to me than her true blood red. Were these Vanth's eyes on Drusilla's face? Or had her eyes been that color in life?

She watched me as I passed; cobra neck, crocodile smile.

A new girl was on the exercise bike, not Alice. This one was pumping away at a hard pace, her sweaty hair down across her face. She was toned and lean, grey sweats revealing a flat stomach glistening.

I looked past the bike, though the window to the astroturf 'garden' beyond. My heart skipped as I saw a slight brunette sitting meditating, but to my disappointment she wasn't Alice. I wondered why I cared, because I knew this Alice wouldn't be mine.

I stood still in the middle of the main room, weary in my mortality, limbs hanging like dead weights. It felt crushing having to hold myself up, to breathe, to force my ribs up and down. I felt myself swaying like a vine in a breeze.

"Morning Buffy, you have a visitor but I will have to take your readings first" Sara said. She had her bronze hair done up differently today, but she still smelled of lily of the valley and Jasmine. Vanth, or Drusilla, I wasn't sure, was still watching me as I sat down at one of the plastic chairs at the dining table. I looked away, back to the girl on the bike. She wasn't tiring, wasn't slowing.

"I was at my mother's home." I said. "I fell asleep."

I opened my mouth and accepted the thermometer. I felt the bite of the rubber sleeve inflating around my bicep. I accepted the uncomfortable crush for a millionth time. The air inside hissed away.

"Excellent as always. No blood pressure. No pulse. Okay, he is in the interview room when you are ready."

"He?"

Sara smiled at me and nodded as she packed up the trolley.

"Yes. Don't keep him waiting."

I looked back at the girl on the bike, she had stopped now and was leaning back, towling her face, I watched her abdominal muscles twitch, not caring about my open display of lust. What did it matter in here?

And why was I here? I was at mom's house. How did I fall asleep?

"You already know the answer to that Buffy" Merrick said as I entered the interview room. He wore the same old stained suit, same ugly tie.

"I do?"

"Of course, silly girl. This is a dream, isn't it? And that means…"

"Irkalla." I said. " l drank it. Which means you can be here, sitting here, without your brains all blown out over a merry go round. It's been a long time Merrick."

"It has." The old, portly man said, he sighed tiredly and removed his hat, placing it on the table. His skull was intact, his greying brown hair thinning exactly as I remember before his gun went off. He sat down at the small table and gestured to the seat opposite him.

"Merrick, I did it." I said. "I stopped Lothos. I wiped them out. Just like you wanted."

"I know."

"That's it? That's all you have to say?"

"What do you need to hear? You know who I really am, don't you?" He said, cocking a pudgy eyebrow.

"Then tell me something good. Tell me it was all worth it."

"Was it?"

"You never were proud of anything I did. Were you?"

"Do you really believe that?" He said.

I sat down with a plastic thud, my legs were already tired from the day.

"You know what, Merrick? You know what? Be disappointed with me. See if I care! You want to be disappointed in me, well how about this? I got turned. Out there? I am a vampire."

Merrick glared at me expressionless, or perhaps full of expression, I could never tell with his damned moustache. It was like an upside down shield.

"That's right, I'm a vampire. I chose to be the thing you were so shit scared of becoming that you ate a bullet instead. I signed right on up. So, Watcher mine, you wanna be disappointed in me? I got a whole blood soaked bag of reasons for you now."

Merrick shook his head and slid back his sleeve to reveal his watch.

"oh," I added, "and while we are on the subject of disappointment, Diana said you knew The Volturi controlled The Watcher's Council."

"To fight darkness you must enter it. Everything is dark inside."

"I refuse to believe that." I said, "despite all evidence to the contrary."

"Time is wasting, girl." Merrick said, tapping his watch. "So?"

"So?"

"So, tell me a story. Tell me what you know. That's why I am really here, is it not?"

"I guess, I mean they are fresh out of scones and tea."

But Merrick was glaring again, and that always made me push harder. I wiped at my face wearily.

"Mom must have poisoned the blood with Irkalla. So she had access to it. No, this was unplanned. She had it on her. She knew Alan, worked with him, probably knew his access codes. Alan was murdered. Who benefited? Mom got his job. I am guessing mom knew about Alice's abduction or arranged it herself. And as all that predated me as a vampire, me and Alice as a couple, so that tells me that it probably isn't about me. It never is with her, is it?"

"Was that so hard, child?"

"Oh what is the frikking point, Merrick? I know who you really are." I said. "And knowing any of this doesn't change that I am still stuck in here."

"Silly girl, think. You can gain advantage from every situation if you just think. And not about shoes. You are in here, yes. But what is here?"

"It's a dream. It's... just a hellish dream. It's a time and place, woven from my darkest memories. You, this place, Sara, Drusilla… all just memories. But…".

I could hear the whirling of the exercise bike outside, a constant thrum in the all too real silence. There was a beeping too, a pulse, very faint coming through the air duct. I turned my attention to the door that led back to common area. All too real.

"But…" I said. Merrick's huge silver moustache twitched, and somewhere under there was that knowing smile he always liked to hide.

"But those girls." I said, standing again. "Those girls out there. They are not memories."

"Buffy, for what it's worth, I was always proud of you. Didn't Diana tell you that?"

"And for what it's worth," I said. "I am sorry I was never good enough."

"Guilt should guide your future, not trap you in the past."

"This is all made of memories Merrick. You never told me that."

"Maybe I should have."

The following silence caught my attention. When I looked back, Merrick was gone. Just the smell of cordite lingering in the air and the memory of ringing in my ears as I opened the door.

The girl on the treadmill was sitting stretched out at the dining table, her feet resting on a second chair. She sat like she had been in the ward for a while, or was used to making herself comfy wherever she found herself. She was drinking black coffee from a paper cup.

As I sat down opposite her. She looked at me curiously through her long brown lashes. Her apple cheeks where pink and dewy with sweat. She finished her drink, considering me.

"Do I know you?" She said, eventually. "I feel like I know you."

"A dream. A long time ago. In a thunder storm. There was a cliff." I said.

"Yeah." She said, absentmindedly. "That was it." She threw the empty cup far across the room directly into the trash. "Wild shit, huh? Battle to the death. It's gonna be quite a ride."

"Not all our dreams come to pass. Some are just dreams. Some have cheese. When I fall asleep in here, I will dream. Alice did too."

"Alice? Oh, right, that mad hat wearing rabbit shit. Never read it. Ma wasn't exactly big on readin'. But these dreams, they feel different, don't they? When they are, like, visions. Right?"

"She knows." I said, looking at Drusilla. Somehow her smile widened at this without splitting her face at the sides. "She must dream when she is awake. We three are always awake now."

"Three?" The girl said with interest, a little crease forming between her brows. "The Three That See. She mentioned that."

"You know her? Out in the garden?"

"Nah, not really. She's kinda the new kid on my block." The girl said, her voice smooth and smokey. Boston.

_This one is dangerous. This one has fire._

"She's only been showing up now and again, never talks to me, like I ain't good enough for her. The other one? The shy one from before? She doesn't show up at all now. Vanth bounced her into isolation real good."

"What's your name?" I said.

"Faith." She said. "You?"

"Buffy."

"Is that right?" Faith said, and with that, all her focus shifted my way. As her eyes slid over me, I became aware of my appearance. My hair was a scribble of greasy bottle blonde locks about my face. My Hemry High T-shirt was threadbare, stinking and stained with sweat. I wore no bra beneath it. My cream sweat pajama pants greying at the knees, and I could smell the faint tang of my own urine. I folded my arms and squirmed under her gaze.

"Well look at you." she said. She jabbed a finger towards my chest. "Aren't you supposed to be a vamp, now?"

"Not in here."

"S'funny, the way Diana talked about you, I thought you would be, like, six feet tall, cut from steel. A real wonder woman." She smirked and traced her eyes over me. "You're shorter than I pictured."

"Not by choice."

"So little vampire, you coming for me? To kill me? Is that the deal? Is that why you are starring in my dream now?"

"You are in mine, I think." I said. I didn't have an answer for her beyond that, because I would be kidding myself if I said I hadn't come to Sunnydale to kill her. I knew it would be a possibility, and after seeing her grisly handiwork on the remnants of the Volturi guard, if it came down to Faith and I fighting over my coven' survival, only one of us would be walking away from that.

"Maybe we are both in hers." Faith said, shooting a thumb towards the meditating girl out in the fake garden.

"I think I am supposed to help you." I said, leaning in so Nurse Vanth cannot hear. Faith leaned in too, so we were inches apart. I could smell the sweetness of her fresh sweat, the coffee on her breath and the nagging absence of blood.

"Help? Me?" She chuckled, "Well, sweet cheeks, I suppose you could always fall on a stake, but between us girls I am really, really looking forward to doing you myself."

"They are lying to you Faith. They lied to me."

"Lesson for ya, B. Everyone lies. Who am I gonna trust? Sure ain't gonna be no fang head like you. You picked your side in all this."

"Vampires can be good."

The girl snorted in contempt and then let loose a lusty laugh which snapped the girl outside from her trance. She looked at us curiously.

"It's that time. You coming or staying?"

"I don't think I get a choice."

The Boston girl shrugged and stood. She looked me over again.

"Be seeing ya real soon." She said with a wink, and then she vanished.

Drusilla's laughing and clapping was muffled by the glass. I shot her a disapproving glare as I walked out to the garden.

"Hi." I said to the girl sitting here.

Like Faith, she was stunningly beautiful with strong features and deep brown eyes and shoulder length brown hair. However she was clearly Latina. She wore a greenish hospital gown stamped with UH Cleveland, the drafty sort that tied at the back and didn't cover anything. Despite this, she sat cross legged on the aluminum bench, hands loose at her sides.

"Kennedy?" I said when she didn't respond.

"For now." She said. "I waited. I am not sure why, but I waited. It doesn't hurt anymore. Is that a good sign, or a bad one?"

"Pain reminds us we are alive, right?".

"Oh. Damn. I had hoped for more. I wanted to see Japan. The cherry blossom, the monkeys in the hot springs, you know? But, I guess this will have to do."

"They have monkeys in hot springs?" I sat down next to her.

"It's adorable. Little scamps. I think I would have liked to see more beauty in the world. When I was called, it just got so ugly, so quickly, you know?"

I nodded and took her hand. It felt cold and lifeless, the pulse barely there.

"You're beautiful." She said with a half smile. I blushed. "Hey, thanks for coming to see me."

"My pleasure. They are all waiting for you. But not me."

"That's not fair. But I will say hi from you, if it makes any difference. Okay. I think I am ready now." She looked over my shoulder, squeezed my hand and let it fall.

A moment later, her skin bleached white and freckles appeared like stars. Confused green eyes looked up at me from beneath sweat soaked coils of ginger hair.

"What the hell?" The girl said, and then she, too, vanished.

"Yep. About sums it up." I said, to no one.

I took in a deep breath of the garden air and looked up at the sky. Even though it was daylight, the moon was peeking through the atmosphere.

I didn't know how long I had to wait. I guess none of us do.


	24. From Beneath You

Chapter 23

From Beneath You

"It was six days last time. Full days. And nights, complete with dreams. Heh, dreams within a dream." I said.

"Yes. You where lucid for six days." Said the doctor. "Then you relapsed. The nurse found you unconscious in the common area, and after that you were unresponsive again."

"Riiiight" I said and yawned. I let my head flop back and gazed up at that old copper stain on the ceiling. "Relapse. Got it."

It was three days and three nights so far. The last time, the Irkalla had been delivered directly into my spine. In the thirty minutes Alice and I had been under, we experienced almost a full week in our respective hell holes.

This time, I drank it. So maybe that meant a higher dose, or maybe it meant less, so it wasn't detectable. Either way, I had the soul crushing feeling I would be in here a while.

Faith and the new girl had not appeared again. Neither had Kennedy, but then, I guess I knew she never would. I had developed the theory that they were Slayers somehow collectively sharing a dream, perhaps because we all patched into the same source. It was strangely comforting to think I was still connected, that the absence of my sleep was the only thing barring that door to me. Still, if I was right, then Faith and the ginger one wouldn't be back until they dreamed too, I was experiencing time differently. I could experience days or even weeks until they came again, if ever they did.

That there where two active Slayers didn't surprise me. Everything I was told by The Watcher's Council was a lie. Maybe there was more? Maybe we divided when darkness gained strength. Maybe another rose to the challenge when a Slayer was turned? Was I the reason? Or did my Slayer potenial childe become a full Slayer as my venom shaped her? Was it two for two? Did my weakness tip the scales?

"So, how do you feel?"

"Feel?" I laughed. "Doc, on the shit you got me pumped full of, I can't remember what feelings even are. How do you feel?"

"Last time we spoke, you thought this was hell, in the literal sense. And now?"

"S'not hell. More like… a waiting room. What do you call that?"

"Limbo? Gehenna? Twilight? Purgatory?"

"Oooh, That's the one. Pergola-tory."

"Well, that's progress at least." The doctor said with a slight chuckle. "You seem in better spirits."

I shot him a shiny fangless grin. "Oh, you know me. Just going with the flow. Doing my time, yunno. Tick-tock."

"Indeed." He said, writing something down on his clipboard. I glanced at the young woman he had with him, she sat in the corner, taking detailed notes as always. She wasn't using one of those useless flexible safety pens. Her fountain pen was in silver and polished wood. Tut tut. Someone could get hurt.

"From beneath you it devours." He said, causing me to look back.

"What did you say?"

He looked up, confused. Then he glanced over at the woman, who nodded and wrote something down. I felt an icy chill in my gut, but I didn't understand why, because this wasn't real, after all.

Was it?

…

The weight of the days was shaping me. The tick-tock of the clock was the sound of the sculptor's hammer hitting the chisel. Marble skin, marble mind.

I paced the short corridor, back and down, up and back, trying to keep moving, keep going, like every step got me closer to the waking.

Tick-tock. Chip-chip. Step- step.

Each time I passed Alice's room, I glanced in the observation window. Each time I found her lying there, still, deadly still, staring catatonic up at the ceiling. Each time I felt guilt stab into me, and I promised myself not to look again next time I passed.

And each time I broke my promise.

And as I walked I ran over my interactions with mom. Looking for a clue. Asking over and over again 'why did she do this to me?'

'How could she do this to me?'

…

On the tenth day, they noticed I hadn't eaten. I couldn't. Even if I could stand the sickening texture of the solid food in my mouth, everything tasted of ash. Water tasted of nothing, but it helped the burning.

I agreed to the drip feed, I was just too weak, and it was confusing me. My mind had to be clear. It had to. As the huge needle pierced my flesh, I felt faint metallic crackles. I looked for the silver webs, but saw just tissue-thin human skin parting.

The feel of the liquid flowing into my veins felt foreign, it may as well have been gasoline.

...

I don't remember writing it. Any of it. But I must have, because when Sara found the walls of my room scrawled in ink, my hands were blackened and bloody.

The fountain pen lay on my floor, cracked in two,cartridge exposed, little splinters of wood in the glistening ink on my hands.

From beneath you it devours.

From beneath you it devours.

From beneath you it devours.

…

"Hunger eats the hungry." Drusilla said as she peeked in through the metal porthole to the isolation room. She tutted and clacked her claws against the safety glass.

"Why are you here?" I said weakly.

"Misery loves company, or so they say. Besides, I don't get no choice about it, do I? He gave me the stars, and all they do is spin me."

"Alice. Do you see her? Is Alice okay?"

"She's still drunk. Your clock is quicker. Told ya. Little Sister dreams. But it's nightmares for us."

"Please… get me out of here? Please. I can't. I can't take this anymore. Dru, please. You let Alice out. Please."

"Would if I could, but I don't 'ave no key. You will, soon enough, but you won't want it."

"Get me out of here!" I screamed in rage. "Give me blood! I need blood! Give me blood!"

Dru licked her lips and drew a pentagram on the glass with one sharp fingernail. Satisfied with her work, she looked at me and snapped her teeth together.

"Let me out! Let me out!" I rush at the door, bouncing off the canvas.

"I will kill you!" I scream and smash my fist against it. "I will kill all of you! Drink down every last one of you! Do you hear me? I will kill you. Let me out!"

But Drusilla wasn't Drusilla, for now she was Vanth. She looked in with her cold blue eyes, visibly shaken at what she was witnessing.

She closed the window on me.


	25. Knock, Knock

Chapter 24

Knock, knock

_**They** did this to me.__**Their** food was poison.__**Their** medicine was poison.__**Their** words just lies to keep me buried here.__Each day **they** shovel more upon me.__Shovel load by shovel load.__Lie after lie.__Syringe by Syringe.__**They** think they can bury me, keep me in the dark with the dust and bones.__But **they** forget what I am.__What I really am.__I am a thing that digs itself out of graves by dark.__I have claws that catch.__I have jaws that bite.__**They** think I am miss muffet, but **they** are wrong.__I am the spider.__**They** think me Red Riding Hood.__I am the wolf.__**They** will pay for that mistake.__**They** will.__**They** will.__**They** will.__I swear it.__I will drink **them**.__I will.__**They** will be my food.__**They** will be my medicine.__And I will make **their** lying mouths scream for me._

…

Sara was first, but in a way, wasn't she the worst? So sweet and kind, pretending to care? She smelled of flowers as I crushed her windpipe with my teeth and held on until her garbled screams brought the orderlies.

They were big, but big bodies weigh down heavily on snapped knees and splintered shins. I had their throats too before they knew it. My teeth were blunt here, but sharpening.

And the orderlies brought in the keys, so the nurses station was mine a minute later. Strange, as I killed the nurse I found there, that some of the room was blurry, or emptied out into the black void. I pondered, as I snapped her neck, that was maybe because I had never seen the room myself.

No alarm would bother me now. I had time to do whatever I wanted.

So, I did what I wanted. I drank my fill of sweet little Sara, as she was the sweetest, gagging down the gulps of her hot, thick blood. It didn't taste of ash, it thrummed with all the hot spice of a thundery Volterra night. And as I drank I felt my body strengthen, become marble hard, my vision return to glorious spectrums beyond human. I was waking.

"Sister, what a frightful mess you have made." Drusilla said, standing in the main doorway with her arms casually crossed over her chest. She wore a blood red gown and a smile made of fangs, her eyes wild in delight at my work. "I do so love a party."

"They did this." I said. I rose and stalked over to Drusilla, savoring the power and grace my long starved limbs now had. "It's their fault. They did this."

"The fault is in our stars, my sister." Drusilla said, looking up fearfully, then she closed her eyes and tilted her head like she had stepped into a hot shower. "They are all dead as we are, burnt out and lost in time. You and I dance to ghosts."

"Alice?"

"She does too. Or will. Or did. We get so confused by time, she and I. But we have you to guide us now." Dru said, stroking my cheek with long, pale fingers. They came away red, and she groaned as she dipped them between her lips.

"And Willow?"

"Can't see her now. Can you?" She said.

I shook my head.

"Because the thief stole her fire. And she will steal yours, and mine, and Alice's, and she will not stop until she burns our world to screaming ash."

"I will make them pay. I will make them all pay. Is that what the stars say?" I said, licking at the blood in my teeth.

"Not stars. Letters, like little crows. Ink is blacker than night. Together they are a murder. more than we ever could. The thief knows the crows."

"The library. From my vision" I said. "How do I get there?"

Drusilla grinned. Her eyes were following the blood pools around the humans. I turned to see droplets fall upwards, to the ceiling. Then, they began to flow faster, rising in steady streams that seemed to melt the floor around them and carry it with them. The blood flowed until everything fell up and away, leaving me alone in the dark.

I woke up to the dusty smell of books.


	26. Best Interests

Chapter 25

Best Interests

It wasn't like waking up from regular sleep, more like The Irkalla was a thousand little black claws holding my conscious mind captive, and they started to release a few at a time, dropping me bit by bit to my senses.

The smell came first. Old books, new books, sweet printer's ink, soapy wood, concrete dust. But all tainted with a faint scent like rotten eggs. Next came the sound- whistling and whining of strong winds above, and a heavy groaning sound of wood under pressure, echoing through a big empty building.

More of the Irkalla gave, and I could feel my fingers on cold wood, gritty with a tickling sensation I knew to be ash. My feet curled to life stiffly in my boots came next.

More feelings ripped slowly and painfully free from the little black claws in my mind, and I knew _want_ again. I wanted to move, I wanted vengeance, I most of all, I wanted blood. My lips were numb, but inside I could feel fangs as sharp and ready as my mind wanted desperately to be.

The windy howl shifted, and I heard a spluttering of flames. I could smell the candles now, fatty and acidic, and as my vision was slowly released, I could just make out their orange glows, like hundreds of eyes upon me.

The rest of the room was hard to make out a first, for the candle light barely licked the book stacks, and the air was tinged with particles of black soot.

"Well gosh darn, I do believe you are waking up. I was beginning to worry."

I felt a hot sensation rising up through me from beneath, which gave way to pins and needles. I shuddered. Something gave in me, like gravity, tearing me from the Irkalla' grasp and spinning my mind up into my body.

The pain was brief, but sharp and forced me to curl up into a ball, I heard myself groan. To my horror I vomited a great gout of black foamy fluid onto the floor. Drew in a breath, and vomited again.

"Oh, now that is a sight. But, better out than in, my dear mother used to say."

My arms were mine again, just, and I shakingly pawed at my mouth to clear away the last of the foul black foam. A blurry white shape appeared before my face, and it took me a second to see it was a box of wet wipes attached to an arm, and that belonged to a man standing over me. And that man, was Richard Wilkins.

"Moist towelette?" He said, with a toothy grin. "No? Well, I will just leave them here beside you. Take your time Ms. Summers, no rush, I hear it is a very potent experience."

"S...sw...an." I managed. "I…"

"Oh, that's right, I do remember Joyce mentioning that. My apologies for the assumption, Ms. Swan. I have to say, you are a real chip off the block though. Your mother to a T.

"You know, Joyce was planning on changing her name back to Nixon after the divorce. But I talked her out of it. I mean, 'Summers for Sunnydale'? That campaign just writes itself, doesn't it? You don't throw away a golden opportunity like that. Besides… Nixon? Eesh, too much political baggage there."

He had stepped away from where I lay, which I realized was upon a long, narrow desk. To my right side was a doorway, the door itself torn from its hinges, revealing what looked like small office. Behind me, over my head, the double doors I remember Willow leading me through in my vision of the high school. To my left, and beyond where my feet were pointed, the library proper. All dancing shadows and black voids in the dim candle light.

"My apologies for you waking up in a strange place. You know, I said to myself 'bring your daughter to work day? Excellent idea for a morale booster', plus I was very excited to meet you. But the timing isn't the best, we had big plans for tonight."

The Mayor rested against a desk, near a metal cage, watching my pathetic attempts to sit up.

"Mom… where…"

"Oh, she had a last minute thing she needed to wrap up down at the docks. She will be here soon enough. But I feel your impatience, I do. Here, let me assist."

My head lolled as he took me by my shoulders and sat me up. A few firm pats shook the dust from my shoulders. I could barely feel the impacts, my nervous system was still a lake full of eels under the ice of my skin. I growled as he then gingerly dabbed at my face with a towelette.

"There. Much better. Now aren't you just the prettiest little thing? A shade too thin perhaps, but there isn't a heck of a lot we can do about that now is there? That's the problem with vampires. You are all frozen in time, unable to move on. To grow. To evolve. To better yourselves." He smiled and slapped a huge hand onto my shoulder. "Or am I wrong about that?"

"M'Gonna… kill… you." I managed through gritted, bitter tasting teeth.

"Now, I do admire honest talk. In fact I like to encourage it. Plus, I enjoy your can-do attitude in the face of overwhelming odds. It's what I look for in an employee."

"Go to hell." I said, my words gruff but clear.

"Wouldn't be too long a trip." He chuckled. "Doors just over there. Can't you feel it?"

I knew it was there. The hole. The Hellmouth. Not ten feet from me. But my mind screamed at me for trying to look. I tried again, but shuddered, like a great serpent had slithered through me. So I kept my eyes on The Mayor. He circled around the room, surveying the damage. He picked up an old tome, shook off the dust and proceeded to flick through the pages.

"So, Ms. Swan, it seems a lot of interesting things have been happening in the vampire community lately, and I do so like to keep abreast of current affairs. Take this place. Ruined. The Master- Nest, and his little witch tried to open The Hellmouth, again. You would think the Earthquake that levelled half the town the first time would be clue enough not to meddle. But he always was terribly persistent."

"He's d… d...dead." I said. "Slayer."

"So I hear. Which confused the heckaroonie out of me at first. Because I happen to know for a fact that The Slayer is comatose, in a hospital in Cleveland. So, that's a curious thing, don't you think?"

I shrugged, which to my delight seemed to annoy him. I also knew he was wrong on several counts, which delighted me further. I lowered myself down from the counter, thankful I gripped the edge, because my legs buckled as I tried to put my weight upon them.

"You know what else I hear? I hear that a Slayer was turned. Not the last one, hopeless thing, no, she got her throat slashed through by Drusilla Aurelius. Bled to death... you know, on the very spot where you are right now, funnily enough. Imagine that?"

He tossed down the book and picked up another, equally ancient looking tome.

"Joyce, your mother, is a lovely woman. And an asset to our town. You should be very proud of her. I know she is of you. She talks a lot about you. Just gushes about your achievements."

I thought that as the Irkalla let go, I would feel strong. But I was wrong. I was weak, not just from the poison, or the harrowing experience that followed, but because I was running on empty.

And though I feasted on _them_, not ten minutes ago, that blood was just the stuff of dreams, my hunger was real. I needed real blood. I wanted his blood. But I wasn't even close to being strong enough to get it.

"Now let me see, junior ice skating champion, junior gymnastics, junior homecoming queen, cheerleading squad… oh yes, let's not forget your crowning achievement, shall we? One Girl in All The World. The Chosen One. The Slayer."

He picked up another book and flipped through it. He turned it to me and flipped through it again, so I could see the ancient pages.

"Well, would you look at that? This one is blank too. A whole library full of blank magic books. Now what do you make of that? Sure isn't the funding cuts I made."

He slammed the heavy book shut, and dropped it with a loud bang. Then he advanced towards me again.

My mouth was dry and bitter with Irkalla and thick sulphur air, but my fangs were still sharp. He just needed to come close enough.

"So, Buffy. May I call you Buffy? You may call me Richard. See, Buffy, I was confused as to how The Slayer could be in two places at once. I thought, well, what if this girl, who cut her way through an entire vampire coven in just one week, this girl with white skin and brown hair, wasn't The Slayer, just a very zesty young lady with extraordinary fighting skills? It would make sense, right? But here is where it gets very interesting to me. This girl, she was wielding the legendary Slayer Scythe itself. And as you and I both know, only The Chosen One can do that."

He looked around the room and shook his head.

"There is an order to all things Buffy. Even in chaos, if you look closely enough. One girl dies, the next is called. That's the order. So how can there be two? Unless of course, one of them is already dead. Or, Undead."

He lowered himself tantalizingly closer. Not close enough yet. Just a little closer.

"Now, Buffy, I am a forgiving man. Ask anyone. I can forgive the decimation of Aurelius and the destruction of The Master. Heck, the new guy is much more charming if you ask me, plus, he has no interest in opening The Hellmouth, which suits me just dandy. No, all that? Forgiven. It's just The Scythe that concerns me. That's an important historical artefact, young lady, it should be properly looked after."

He inched closer to me, nearly close enough to strike.

"Where is The Scythe, Buffy?"

I mumbled through my fangs, my voice cracked and horse.

"What was that?" He said, squinting.

I repeated what I said, mumbling and slurring. He leaned in to hear.

"I said 'lean in if you're an idiot'."

I lunged, burying my claws deep into his ribs, pulling him in as I buried my fangs into his throat with all the ferocity I could manage. I pulled hungrily, expecting the blood to explode life through me at any second. I didn't care if it was tainted, like the blood I drew from Alice, I wanted it, every last drop. Nothing.

I felt a shudder in his body, but it was no spasm from my venom. He was laughing. He was laughing at me! I drew back in disgust, growling in rage.

My bite mark, which took up most of his throat, was oozing thick black oil. I watched in horror as the sump began to crawl back up into the wound. A moment later it was as if no bite had existed at all.

My mouth crackled and fizzed, just like my nostrils had when I held my mother, and I felt woozy again. I slid down the side of the counter, my red leather clad legs folded beneath me like so much red licorice.

"Well now, aren't you the feisty little firecracker. Ha ha. Yes. But you know, that sort of thing just is not sanitary. Not sanitary at all."

The Mayor plucked a towelette from the box and wiped his neck, then his hands.

"What are you? What have you done to my mom?"

"I am… merely a man of the community. Sunnydale is all about that. A diverse community coming together in one place, honoring The Old Ones below. Your dear mother understands that. And you should too, after all, you have Old One blood within you now. You are a part of this community. And believe me, it is in everyone's best interest if you give me The Scythe, Buffy."

"And if I don't?"

"Let's take that option off the table, shall we? Joyce would be such a great loss to everyone."

I wanted to laugh, but I was far too weak. Save my mother? The mother that poisoned me? The mother that abandoned me over and over again?

"Well, speak of the devil." He grinned, slipping his hands into his pockets. I turned to see her push through the double doors, flanked by four thuggish looking male vampires dressed in suits. "Joyce, how timely. Your young lady just woke up!"

She crouched down before my slumped body, she looked sympathetically at my state, and placed a paper bag down next to me.

"Hey sweetie, I brought you some blood. Here, it's ocelot. They tell me it's very.."

I snatched the bag and threw it as far as I could. Weak as I was, I drew myself up the counter, propping myself up by my elbows. I could smell it now, that same thick, poisonous oil like The Mayor, oozing from her pores.

"Get away from me." I growled.

"Buffy, please calm down. You're embarrassing me."

I looked back at the mayor, who stood by the pit. One of the henchmen handed him an ornate metal box, which he held with great reverence, his face devoid of that shark smile for the first time. His gaze slithered over to mine. I felt the Hellmouth quivering in delight.

I was too hungry to think, too angry to focus, so I staggered towards the doors. Joyce tried to steady me, but I batted away her hands.

"Don't."

"Now Buffy, don't be so dramatic. It was just a little something to help you sleep."

I made it to the doors, growling at the henchmen to get out of my way. They growled back, unmoving.

"Buffy, it was for your own good." She said, her expression hardening.

"No mom. That's just it. I decide what is for my own good. Not you. Not any more. Do you understand?"

Joyce glared at me, shaking with rage.

"And what? Your idea of your own good, running away? Getting turned? Lusting after some... some... stupid little native slut with no prospects." She said. "You have no idea what is best for you."

I snorted, and turned to leave.

"You walk out of here, young lady…"

"Now, Joyce, I think everyone is just a little hungry. No good talk comes on an empty stomach. Our dinner is here and I think it would be best if you let young Buffy go out and get herself a bite to eat. Then perhaps we all meet up later for a pleasant chat on a full stomach. How does that sound?"

Joyce glare fizzled away, and she nodded. With a wave of her hand, the henchman stepped aside.

I turned my back on my mother and limped away.


	27. Monsters

Chapter 26

Monsters

The high school was abandoned, hollow as my belly, the smashed windows as sharp as my teeth. Outside, the wind howled and scratched at the walls with branchy fingers.

I limped my way through a corridor scattered with torn books, graffiti and upturned lockers, to a hall still hung with bunting from a parent/teacher night. Chairs and tables thrown around, their legs sticking up like ribs of some long dead monster.

Everything was blurred at the edges, the colors deadened and grim. My hunger was gnawing at my mind, whispering of murder and of mayhem, like the ward, like in my Irkalla. I ached for that last moment, drenched in glorious red life.

All the while I could feel it coaxing me, calling me, mocking every step I took away from it. And in truth, I wanted to go to it, but not back to them. Not back to her.

**_But Buffy, here there is blood, close to my warmth, on the floor, where you threw it._**

"Stop." I whispered.

**_Imagine the taste. Imagine the life force. Ocelot... isn't that a big cat? Maybe it tastes like that kill you shared with Willow._**

"Shut up."

**_Remember the blood on her lips? The blood in her eyes? You like her. You are like her. She understands. She wants to return to me. If you do, she will._**

"No."

**_Buffy. Come. Drink from my lips. I need you._**

"Shut up!"

**_Mmmm. Good kitty_**.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

I fell upon the fire doors, using my weight to open them, and staggered out into the windy night. I slumped upon the double railing, using it to practically slide my way down the stairs, sagging into an exhausted heap at the bottom. The clouds above me boiled black, charged with power that set the fine hairs on my skin on end. There was no hint of rain in the polluted California air, no promise of release.

Before me, the suburban nightmare of sprawing streets, long and wide, lined with faded candy colored houses. The smell of the static charged air was like a sweet fairground memory.

_Scratch the surface, oh, scratch the surface, and it bleeds._

I clawed my way to my feet, staggering on, my venom like syrup falling from my dry, cold lips. They were inside. They held the blood. They had the life in their veins I so desperately wanted.

My heavy boots carried me on, house after house I found dark, empty, or nailed with crosses that told me they knew. How many trees they had planted down this avenue, how like the forest they want it. Like the wild in which I hunted. I was looking for tracks, for clues of my prey, and there I found it, a 'for sale' sign marked sold, a door with no crosses and an inviting glow of lights within.

My ears pricked to the faint wail, hidden behind the winds. As I reached the house, the wail became a cry, high and harsh, a gargled, hungry call of a helpless one.

I followed it to the source, past the piled-high trash on the sidewalk with the cradle's box still in it, up the concrete drive to the side of the house. The wall held my fading body, nails scraping deep into the brickwork for purchase.

It's cry changed, moving upwards, and I knew it was being held. I could smell the other one's blood now and the sickly sweet milk powder as she fed it. Her blood was ebbing and tired next to the exploding newness of the one she held.

My body was shuddering with need now. I made my way, closer and closer to my release. They had to let me in. They had to.

The glow from the front door window was of the deepest orange, and the warmth of the glass almost scorching against my cheek. I was so close to that delicious, inviting scent. So close.

The doorbell was agonizing to my ear, and I flinched, my head swimming even more. My knees barely holding me now, I pressed myself against the doorframe for support. I could feel nothing but my hunger, wrapped in rage, burning me up like a dying star.

They were coming to the door. Stupid. They deserved this. I deserved this.

They opened the door, and stood there in an ugly pink dressing gown, young face puffed from sleeplessness, wide blue eyed, curling ginger hair over freckled milk fat flesh.

"Oh my god, are you alright?" She said, her accent posh English.

"Need. It hurts. Please."

"I'm calling an ambulance." she said. "It' okay. Shit. Everything will be okay."

A venom tasting chuckle passed my lips, and as I my head lolled forward I felt my hair crackling with static and my forehead grew hot against the invisible ward. Then savage wind was at my back, pressing me to it. The pain sparked me back from fading into the abyss, I hissed and looked for my prey.

The hall was long and narrow, lined with half unpacked boxes, piles of books and a toaster wrapped in a cord. The woman was further down the hall, fumbling for a phone, dialing and cursing to herself.

"Damn it! I think the lines are down, must be the storm." She said, returning to me. She crouched, brushing my slick hair back from my face. "You look awful, are you bleeding? What happened to you?"

"Hurts… Co… cold. So cold."

"Gosh, I'm sorry... do come in."

That instant I felt the pressure change, the heat on my face dissipate, and I fell forward.

It was savage, instinctual, like every cell in me had no purpose but to strike. My world spun, a tumble of limbs and boxes and shards of a shattered lamp. Everything was dazed and blurry, but I felt her body hot under mine, my claws shredding a box to clear a path to her foolish throat. A muffled, wet gasp, choking instead of screaming. I blinked and shook my head to clear my vision, to find my prey.

And that's when I saw it.

It was on all fours before me, eyes black like coal, framed in red, mouth split wider than a human's could ever be, a horrific rictus of razor fangs, slick with dripping ichor and black foam. Its spidery fingers long, ending in blackened tips like hammered black iron nails. Instinct saved me, and I reeled back just as it was about to strike, which seemed to startle it into retreat.

The monster gazed back at me in shock, and one of it's grotesque claws rose to its face. I felt my own press to my cheek.

It was a mirror.

A mirror, propped up against the wall, half wrapped in paper and string, waiting to be hung.

I drew back on my knees, the coughing woman still beneath me, trapped between my red leather clad legs.

I ran a tembling hand over my cheek, the twisted nails screeching against the marble skin. I gasped and blew all the breath out from me in a cry, watching the foam fall from my lips. With three painless wet crunches I had fingers once more, soft tipped with short nails, tracing over my lips to the murderous array of fangs lurking there. They too, somewhat reluctantly, began to pull back in.

The woman was gazing at me now, paralyzed with fear, her heart beating mercilessly in her breast. I felt the throb of it through my body, my mind filled with the swishing sound of the life coursing through her.

The baby was crying again. Her eyes flicked back, even in the clutches of death, her instinct was to go to her child.

"What's her name?" I said, my fangs still distorting my words.

"S...s…. Sadie."

"and... yours... your name?"

"Please… please…"

"What's your name!"

"Eleanor… uh… Peterson. Eleanor Peterson."

I was so weak. So hungry. I felt myself slipping deeper, sagging down onto her trembling blood filled body. Her neck was inches from my lips. I was so tired. I just had to lean in and... I...

"Eleanor." I whispered. "Listen to me."

She had her head pressed to the floor, her eyes shut. I gripped her face and turned her to look at me. She smelled like heaven.

"Elenor... never, ever, invite anyone in after dark. First light, as soon as the sun is up… leave Sunnydale. Take Sadie, and get far from here. Do you understand?."

She nodded, barely more than her tremble. I growled as my stomach twisted in pain, which set her shuddering in terror, her eyes where screwed shut.

"Listen. There are... worse things than me." I said, pulling back from her, slumping against the wall by the open door. "Things that have… forgotten... who they are."

She stayed down, arms drawn up to her red, tear streaked face. locked to the spot. The baby was wailing now.

"Go on, Sadie needs you. Don't worry. One way or another, I will be gone when you return."

I looked back at the mirror, to the ice fleshed creature with coal black eyes, just a wretch of a girl now, cropped brown hair matted to her face, dirt smeared and weak. But a girl.

Just a girl.

Eleanor dared to move then, scramble back, find her feet and run to her child, slamming the door behind her, and into her new world where monsters really did exist.

I stood, all but completely spent, and stepped out into the night. I don't think I made it that far, I couldn't tell. I guess I made it to the road, as I felt the metallic crack of the back of my skull against the tarmac when I finally fell.

The moon was full above me, a perfect disc of shimmering light, that split and danced rainbows across my fading eyes.

My fingers found the leather band on my wrist, the crest of my coven, my family. And though the hunger was destroying me second by second, the pride I knew that my family would feel for me if they knew, burned in my chest.

And I felt proud of me, as I watched the last of the moon.

I closed my eyes and hummed to myself, waiting to fade away.

I am Buffy.

Buffy Anne Swan.

Of Cullen, I am.

I was once The Slayer.

And I saved people from monsters.


	28. Warm

Chapter 27

Warm

Somewhere an angel was singing to me.

It must be lost.

Wherever I was, I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn't mean anything, nothing had form, but I was still me, you know? And I was warm and I was loved and I was finished.

But there was an up before me, and a down behind me. And in that great depth behind me came rumbling, constant, distant. Nothing to be afraid of, just there. Perhaps it was an ocean, or maybe it was the world in all it's madness grinding and whirring on without me.

Over me, the Angel's song flowed, it's shape, the only shape- its rhythm my only sense of time. As I listened, the song became clearer, and more familiar, for I could not only make out words but knew the voice.

Thinking of Jessica made me smile, and with that smile I suddenly had cheeks. Cheeks upon and a face, a face upon a head, a head upon body, and there I was, in time and body, sung back to life.

I supported on a warm lap, and smooth warm fingers stroked my forehead.

I knew then that the rumble was tyres on the road, that I was laying across the back seat of a vehicle. And I knew the waves of peace passing through me came from Esme. My smile widened and I opened my eyes.

Esme sighed happily as I reached up to embrace her, and she wrapped me in a glorious, deep hug that buried me anew in a sensation of belonging. I purred into her blue-black body warmer, and let myself be held.

"There's my girl." She said. "There you are."

"Esme. I was so lost." I murmured. "I was so, so lost."

"I know darling. But we found you. You are safe now."

I pulled back, curious as to who else had come. Jessica, of course, for it was her whose song I heard. She sang on, her lips pulling tight into that mischievous, birdy little grin as she saw me. She sat in the passenger seat, which she had set far back, her denim clad legs stretched out so her boots where up on the dashboard.

The driver was Edward. I met his golden eyes as he looked into the rear mirror, the corners lifted with a smile as he saw me- such a contrast to when we sat next to each other at Forks High School that first day.

"Hey there stupid head." Jessica said. "Before you ask, Alice is fine. Your honey woke up yesterday, but was too weak to travel."

"Where are we?" I said.

"Heading for a motel just outside Sunnydale's pull." Edward said "We should be there soon."

"You can feel it too?" I said. "The Hellmouth?"

"Feel it. Hear it. It's insidious. Everywhere I listen, in so many minds. I haven't felt anything like this before." He said, his scowl was back. He flipped the indicator and turned off the road, passing a dead pink neon "no vacancy" sign and a fenced off swimming pool illuminated by a handful of flickering lights. We pull up into a parking lot.

"How far out of Sunnydale are we?" I said.

"About three miles." Edward said. "Out of its power, but close enough that I can still hear it. I want to keep tabs on what it is saying."

As I step out of Edward's Volvo S60R, I am greeted with a glorious twilight sky, an explosion of deep pink and purple hues that vibrate in my restored vision. The wind is even now, as if the still strangely thick air has weakened the ferocity.

I was not weak, as I feared. I stood strong on unyielding legs once more. My body positively sang with life. I can taste the blood of deer on my lips.

Esme looped her arm around mine and we followed Jessica and Edward into the faux sandstone complex. I can sense all of the rooms we pass are empty, the only fresh scent I find is a single human, mingled among the stale sheets and detergent. Still, Edward's hold on Jessica is a little firmer than just their usual loving contact. And though I am glad of Esme's arm linked to mine, the loose hold she has reminds me of my victory that night, over my darkest self. Perhaps she empathically senses that or perhaps she simply just trusts me more than I did myself, but either way, I relish it.

We make our way to one of four freestanding Hacienda style apartments, and Jessica lets us in with an old key on a wooden tag. The apartment is somewhat musty, somewhat clean, but spacious and open plan. The spanish style continued inside, with a floor of large shiny brown square tiles, high ceilings with wooden beams and Mexican patterned drapes. Jessica went straight to the kitchenette, which opened out into the main living room. I watched her through the rounded arch pasa platos as she pulled a carton from the fridge and gulped back half the contents. Poor thing, she would be sloshing too.

"What happened?" Edward said. "Alice said you were trapped. Someplace she couldn't see."

"I got another dose of Irkalla, but much stronger this time. Ooh, and surprise? My own dear mother gave it to me."

"Oh Buffy" Esme said, and she kissed the top of my head. "I am so sorry."

"Mom…" I said but the word felt rotten in my mouth. I closed my eyes and took another breath. "Joyce… Summers… is the new deputy mayor, she is in this up to her neck. I am not sure how exactly, but she had the Irkalla, and either worked with Alan Finch or may have used him as a patsy. Actually… she seemed real interested that I could see the future. Just before she poisoned me."

Esme squeezed my arm and I felt another wave of peacefulness pass through me. I shook my head.

"It's okay, I need to feel this." I said, to which she nodded. She crossed to the couch and sat down. I noticed then how she was dressed, tight jeans, boots, black long sleeved top and a blue-black body warmer. This, combined with her hair pinned back, she looked, I don't know, ready for action. This was another side of her I had not really seen. The mother, the home maker, the hostess, the professional, and now, the warrior. I was in danger, and she came to save me.

Edward leaned against the wall, thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his black jeans. He was listening silently, I wondered to who. Or what.

"This is dangerous." I said, "Edwards gift."

"We are family, Buffy" Edward said. "We are stronger together. We have to be smart, use all our gifts to stop this witch."

"The others?" I said.

"In Forks. Edward told me about Alice's vision." Esme said. "I had Carlisle insist Rosalie and Emmett stay behind to monitor the survivors, not just to protect them, but to protect the people of Forks. Alice is far too weak to come."

"She is okay though, she will recover?"

"Yes Buffy, she is already back to being a pain in my butt." Edward grinned. "Speaking of which." Jessica wrapped her arms around him and pecked his cheek.

"Where Edward goes, so goeth I. Plus currently about four bajillion gallons of blood." She pressed her hand to her swollen belly. "You're welcome, sis."

"Thank you. All of you." I said, genuinely grateful. "I was stupid to go alone."

"You're Not 'The One Girl In All The World' anymore." Esme said.

"In more ways than one. In my dreams I connected to The Slayers. There are two. The one who slaughtered Aurelius and the Volturi Guard is called Faith. Real attitude problem. The other was Kennedy. She was in a coma in Cleveland. I think she died. Another girl took her place."

"How can there be two?" Esme said.

"Still working on that." I said. "But this Faith chick? Serious threat. And that magic weapon thingie… the red axe? It's called The Slayer Scythe. The Mayor thinks I have it, he mixed me up with Faith."

"You met the Mayor?" Jessica said.

"Yeah. Willow was right about him. Not a vampire, something else. And to add a cherry to that topping? He has this whole invulnerable thing going on. I took a big ole bite out of him and he just laughed it off. Guy takes "oily" to a whole 'nother level."

"And the witch? The one stealing the gifts?" Edward said.

"A no show."

"I couldn't find her either." He said. "She wasn't in anyone's thoughts."

"But, you saw… me?"

He nodded.

"Buffy. You fought it. You won. That was amazing." He said, a lopsided smile on his thin, perfect lips. Jessica looked confused at this, but he shook his head and she looked away. She knew him too well to know when to pry, when to drop the subject. Still, I found myself comforted by his acceptance of what I nearly did. I guess we all had our own 'nearlys' and our own failures.

"So, what now?" Jessica said.

"We rescue Buffy's mom." Esme said.

"She's not… I don't think… " I swallowed back the knot in my throat and rubbed my face and let out a slow breath. "No. Our priority is the safety of our Coven. The witch-thief and The Slayer. But The Mayor is definitely a threat. He thinks I have the Scythe, and he wants it badly. And he is ruthless. He will come after me to get it."

"Maybe it's the one thing that can harm him." Edward said.

"My thoughts exactly. When politician's talks about the needs of the people, it's usually the needs of themselves."

"Then we need to find Faith. Reason with her. She can stop the Mayor." Esme said.

"I dunno." I sighed, "she doesn't seem very reasonable. Besides, the Watcher's Council works for The Volturi. If Faith is slaying Volturi guard, she's gone rogue, right?"

"A Slayer set on wiping out all vampires, with a mystical weapon, free from Volturi influence?" Edward said. "Not good."

"Diana." I said with a groan. "It has to be."

"Who?" Jessica said.

"Diana Cronquist. My former watcher. She worked for The Volturi training me, but only because they had her sister hostage. But she ran away after I was turned. She vowed she would destroy us all." Then I remembered my visions, and I groaned again. "And I told her exactly where to find the next Slayer. Boston. She must have found Faith."

"Is Diana the thief?"

"She didn't have any magical abilities that I knew of. And she is a blonde, you said the witch had black hair."

Edward pulled free from Jessica, fumbling in his dark grey jacket pocket. He unfolded some pages and spread them onto the table. Drawings. To my joy, I recognised Alice's hand at work. She really was awake.

The first image was clearly of Faith, the face was wasn't accurate, but the shape and downwards slant of her kohl heavy eyes was unmistakable. She wore leather pants and white tank top, a tribal tattoo on a muscular arm. The angle was low, from someone lying on the floor, among a pile of wounded guard, the air thick with ash. She loomed over them, terrifying, majestic, confident, cruel. She gripped a long studded ornate axe, which ended in a jagged mace-like socket that clutched a stake.

"Faith." I said, and turned my attention to the next image. A woman, rising above the chaos, seemingly levitated, her feet hanging loose beneath her. She wore a long sleeved shirt in some dark shade, a ragged skirt seemingly shredded by the energies she channeled. On one hand she wore what appeared to be a clawed gauntlet. Her entire eyes where jet black, like mine had been, and her dark hair was depicted as whipping about her. The most striking feature was the grisly black veins that covered her exposed flesh.

My heart sank, and I slumped back against the couch next to Esme.

"It's her. That's Diana."

"And that's extra bad?" Jessica said.

"She's a Watcher, she knows everything they know. She knows The Volturi. And she knows me, my capabilities, my weaknesses." I said, running my fingers through my hair. "And… back in Volterra… just after you and I were turned, Aro made me… No. I, I turned her sister. It was me."

"So she is gunning for you."

I buried my head in my hands, needing darkness to picture everything. The time we spent together in Volterra, her merciless training. Her focus. How she talked about her sister with such love. I could see it, her rage, her grief, driving her to revenge, not just on the Volturi, but all immortals. And now she had the tools to do it. A Slayer. A mystic weapon from which we could not heal. And the power to steal our gifts and turn them on us. And I was terrified.

"Buffy, you where newborn. You couldn't have stopped yourself." Esme said, stroking my back.

"I know. But she still has every right to hate me. Us."

"What about The Mayor?" Jessica said. "Shouldn't we just let him know we don't have The Scythe?"

"Would be believe us? Besides, Town Hall sent the mercs after Alice. I have been poisoned twice, put through a living hell each time. We may not have it now, but I sure as hell plan on getting it."

"It's connected." Esme said. "You feel it is connected."

"Alan Finch." I nodded. "Assuming it was him that tried to capture Alice, he died with a stake rammed into his heart so hard it cracked his spine."

"Sounds like a Slayer." Edward said.

"Faith." I said, "Had to be. So, I am thinking, what if Alan had something that could steal vampire's gifts? He wants Alice's. Faith kills him, Diana gets whatever this stealy thingy wotsit is. That clawy gauntlet, perhaps?"

I stood up, and paced. It could work, but it was a huge leap. Alan would have to know about Alice's gifts somehow. Diana couldn't have known. Someone who knew about the seer.

"Wait a second." I said. "Faith mentioned 'she' mentioned the 'three who see.' Rhymes. Rhymes usually mean prophecy crap. I hate prophecy crap. But Alice, Drusilla and me. That's three vampires who can see the future. Smells like a clue, dontcha think?"

"Drusilla? The one who set Alice free from the asylum in Biloxi." Said Esme. She let out a sigh, clearly thinking about how Alice felt. She knew the trauma Angelus had inflicted on Alice. She had experienced it.

"I met Drusilla. Angelus really did a number on her. Crazy as a cut snake. A whole family sized fun bag of them. Dru talked about Alice and I being her sisters, that I would guide them when we came together."

"Drusilla could be the key to this. We need to go find her." Jessica said.

"Maybe not." I said, pointing up to the mezzanine leading to second floor. Everyone turned to see the woman sitting on the bannister, dressed in a red silk shirt and black leggings. She wiggled her long, slender black claws and giggled.

"Hello dearies." Drusilla said.


	29. Conversations With Dead People

Chapter 28

Conversations With Dead People

The pay phone clicked and swallowed my change.

"Hey you." came Alice's voice down the line, so sweet and soft that it made my eyes flutter shut, seeking the image of her to complete my joy. Of course she knew who was calling. She was Alice

"Hey you." I breathed. Then silence. We both chuckled at that.

"So how was I?" She said.

"Mmm, not bad. Little gamey. You would pair well with a good cabinet." Her laugh was like wind chimes.

"Cabernet" she said, correcting me.

"Little late for me to become a wine snob, Alice." I deadpanned. Silence fell again-comfortable, pregnant, charged. I wanted to reach down the line and touch her face, stroke her, let her hold me, take me, make me feel like everything I had been through was worth it. Everything **_we_** had just been through.

"Alice. What you did for me..."

"Anytime. Anything." She said, and then hummed happily. "I miss you Buffy."

"At the risk of sounding corny, I missed you more." I said. "But I can back that up with a 'Literally', thanks to a huge dose of Irkalla. It's been a very, very long time since I have heard your voice."

"Oh Buffy" she gasped "is that where you were? Baby, how long?"

"Long enough to lose it completely. But, Alice… I came back. I did it… I pulled myself back."

"I need to see you. As soon as I can walk I…"

"You can't walk? Esme never said that-"

"No, Buffy, not like that. I am just weak. A bit groggy. Pins and needles. It's not that bad."

"I hate this." I said. "I want to be there, with you."

"Soon. What's going on? And before you ask, no, I haven't, three and nothing coherent".

Oh, the joys of dating a farseer. I turned from the payphone and looked back at the motel complex. In the harsh morning light with the desert surrounding it, it seemed like an abandoned movie set. Somewhere inside lurked one of the most lethal serial killers in history, and three members of my family.

"Esme has been talking with Drusilla for, like, eight and a half hours solid. Must be the Guinness Book of Records worthy psych session. Either both are walking out sane or neither. Hard to call at this stage."

"What's she like?"

"Drusilla?" I said, pondering the question. "Broken. Childlike. Out of step with time, like her visions and reality are just all smooshed up together into one constant disjointed nightmare." I thought about what that could be like to experience and shuddered. I imagined being in the Irkalla, but having no hope of a reality to return to. I knew that would break me too. And Drusilla she has been sans sanity for over a hundred and thirty years.

"Have you…?" Alice said, her voice faintly trembling.

_Angelus_.

"No, I haven't met him." (Two can play at that game.) "But believe me, when I do..."

"Don't lose your cool if you do. He loves to taunt, manipulate, get you angry. Catch you off guard when you are unbalanced. Can you stay cool for me?"

"Cool? Oh baby, I can do positively cold to the touch." Of course my planned touch involved knuckles. "But, noted. Believe me I am not planning on biting off even more trouble for our family. Yet."

"So, tell me what happened." She said.

I explained the situation with Faith and Diana. When Alice steered me toward talking about Joyces involvement, I found myself changing the subject. It wasn't that I didn't want her to know, I guess the wound was too raw. Still, I did talk about the Mayor, which reminded me about the box Joyce had gotten for him. My thoughts turned to the Scythe and Diana's glove. Three magical artefacts.

"Something's happening here too." She said. "The guard are restless, Jane especially. She is frustrated that she hasn't been able to get reinforcements for some reason. Emmett said The Quileute wolves seem to be coming close to our border. Maybe they sense the Volturi presence, I am not sure."

"I saw them close to the border too. Lots of them. They were watching us when Willow and I hunted."

"You… hunted with Willow?" Alice said, sounding a shade hurt. "She didn't mention that."

"Well, my personal first choice of hunting partner was otherwise occupied making a heroic sacrifice for me. Bless her. Plus, I thought it best to keep the... carnivores... topped up on something other than the good people of Forks."

"Yeah, I… guess." She said, distractedly.

"Alice. I love you. You. And I promise, we will hunt together soon."

"No. Forget it, forgive me. I am being silly. You know how I get when I don't see the future clearly. Makes me all kinds of paranoid. "

"Well, take it as seen that I will get this done and come back to you."

"I know, my love." She said and then she sighed. I hear her muffle the receiver with her hand and yell "Willow, Buffy needs to talk to you".

Damn little psychic vampires being all psychic-y.

I heard the clicking of a marble hand taking the phone, and with that came a discomfort. I could almost feel the presence of Willow inside my personal space. I swallowed and bit my lip in contrition.

"Hey you." She drawled, deliberately mimicking us. "Aww, did I get you in trouble?"

"You can get me out of trouble. The one who stole your power, Diana… she had this spikey, scratchy gauntlet thing. Do you kn-"

"The Glove of Myhnegon. It's a power channeling conduit. It takes power, harnesses it."

"And you know this how?"

"Bored. Looked it up on Jessica's portable PC."

"You can do that? oh... Good. Soooo… any clues as to how to stop it?"

"No. Maybe. There was no record of the gloves full powers. Most of it was written by idiots. Just the lightning throwing stuff and a vague note that 'he who has the glove has power'. Poorly translated. As I said, Idiots."

"Back up. 'Lightning throwing stuff'?"

"The original gaelic says " hold power". Ya hafta speak certain gaelic commands to use it."

"Willow, lightning throwing stuff?!"

"Hmmm? Oh yeah. My advice? Just translate "tar frim" to 'Buffy duck'."

I swallowed. This situation just kept getting worse.

"And if I get my hands on the glove, how do I use it?"

"Can't. The claws fuse with the life essence of the user. It only releases when you are dead. And you are."

"Crap." I pressed my head against the sun heated plastic frame of the payphone and ran my mind over everything again. "Willow, The Mayor had this metal box. Like, about a foot square- looked like strips of iron with symbols and studs and stuff. Do you know what that is?"

"Nope. But, lucky you, I am very bored right now."

"Thank you Willow." I said. "Have… you thought about… what we talked about?"

"Fuck you." She said, her voice less confident and sarcastic. "Maybe."

"And?"

"Ate a deer." She said through a smile. "Surprisingly good. Whatever."

It was a roundabout way of talking, but it made me smile too.

"Just… think about it, okay?"

"Can't. You got me thinking about your box now."

"Willow, I am hanging up."

...

Drusilla wasn't in the main chamber when I returned, but I could hear her singing to herself from one of the bedrooms upstairs . Esme was laid out on the couch, elbows high in the air, fingers pressing little circles into her temples. Edward looked equally spent. He was sitting at the base of the stairs, staring off into the distance. He barely looked up at me as I entered.

"How is she?" Jessica said, pulling off her headphones. She was curled up in a low wicker chair by the patio windows, the sun making her skin a shimmery glow.

"Weak. She says The Quileute wolves are restless. I am worried it has to do with The Volturi Guard's presence, or Leah. Or both. We have to patch things up with them fast." Esme stopped massaging her head and with a graceful whirl of her legs sat up straight.

"Maybe. The council has changed since Harry Clearwater passed away, he was the main peacekeeper between our clans. His widow took his place. I don't know her well."

"Sue Clearwater?" Jessica said. "She's lovely. And she's dating Buffy's dad." Esme looked back to me for confirmation.

"I wanted to keep Charlie out of this." I said. "But… I mean, he's a cop. He figured out about vampires and Slayers by himself. Wouldn't be a stretch for him to realise what I am now. What we all are. But, if he gets into the middle of all this? I worry he could get himself killed. Plus what about Volturi law?"

"I wouldn't worry about that. To keep law, the Volturi need to be able to enforce it." Edward said. "With the guard all but destroyed and their powers stolen? There is no Volturi law."

"But that affects the whole human world." I said. "Vampires going completely unchecked? As much as I hate The Volturi, they kept the balance."

"Diana is going to keep gaining strength the more gifts she steals." Edward said. "And she controls The Slayer now. We immortals could be facing global annihilation."

We all sat with this thought for a minute. I felt the hope draining away. We needed hope. I needed hope.

"Diana's power comes from the glove she wears." I said. "If we can get it off of her, destroy it somehow, maybe the gifts will return?"

"All the while dodging her powers and a psycho with a slayer axe." Jessica said. "Piece of cake."

"Yeah, well." I slumped down on the couch at Esme's feet. "First we need to find her. Any luck with Elvira up there?" Esme took in a long, long breath and let most of it go.

"Drusilla's life isn't a straight line. I recognize this in Alice too. She is bombarded constantly with imagery, both in the form of visions and complex PTSD her mind is… tumbling all those together. Her one constant truth is hunger. And her one release is spite. She gives a new definition to unreliable witness."

"So eight hours and we got squat."

"Actually no," Edward said, "I got a window seat through all this. I couldn't sense her before because she wasn't thinking. She has locked away her thoughts to protect herself. Drusilla runs on instinct. She follows her visions blindly. She gave me some images though. Of her, you and Alice meeting in the darkness."

"And in those moments, she felt true happiness Buffy. Ecstatic joy. A sense of completeness." Esme said. "She wants you to take her to Alice."

"I am not sure that is a good idea." I said. There was something inherently off, tainted, about Drusilla that made me want to keep her far, far from Alice. But I had to admit setting three farseers to the task of finding Diana and Faith made sense. Plus, I wanted desperately to be at Alice's side. I let out a frustrated breath.

"Well then," I said. "Looks like we are headed back to Forks. Dibs the passenger seat. No way am I road tripping sat next to Drusilla."


	30. The Angel's Number

Chapter 29

The Angel Number

Forks greeted us with a downpour. Lightning slashed the cloud heavy night sky, making Drusilla giggle and clap each time. She climbed over the seats, and the passengers laps ahead of each strike, knowing where the next would fall.

She had been mercifully quiet for the majority of the trip. But her unblinking stare at the back of my head nibbled at my sanity, so I was grateful for the foul weather for distracting her.

And as we approached the home stretch, I found myself growing excited as well. I was bouncing on the balls of my feet, pressing my fingers against my thighs to stop myself fidgeting.

As Esme pulled the car up the drive to our home, Drusilla's head snapped back behind us. Her razor grin faltered, and she seemed sober. She wrapped her arms around herself protectively.

"They huff and they puff." She said darkly. "They will tear the little piggy's house down. Fangs and claws take payment for fangs and claws."

"Does she come with cliff notes?" Jessica said. Drusilla laughed at this.

"Some Slayers do." She whispered hoarsely, flicking a shoulder towards me. Her eyes darted about the trees. "Huff and Puff all you like, see wot good it'll do 'er."

"Who?" Jessica said.

Drusilla acted like Jessica wasn't even there. She turned slowly to look at the approaching house, and that chilling wicked grin returned. I followed her eyes to the doorway and smiled to. Alice was standing under the shelter of the entryway, waiting for me.

The greeting party in fact consisted of all the members of my family. Carlilse, Rosalie, Emmett and Alice. Two more people where there to greet us. Off to one side, Willow leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, still dressed in Esme's burgundy sweater and grey leggings. I noted with great interest, that she had added to her borrowed ensemble a pair of my knee length boots from Alice and I's shopping Seattle trip.

The last member of the welcoming committee surprised me. It was Veronica. She stood dressed in tight jeans and a striped black and white top, over which she wore a black blazer.

I was out the door before the car pulled to a stop, and had Alice in my arms a blink of an eye later. She buried her face into me and drew in a long breath, wrapping her arms around me. I could feel how weak her grip was.

Over Alice's shoulder, I saw Esme and Carlisle embrace, in such a warm manner I felt even more squishy inside. Bless them. But the effect was somewhat soured by Willow's disapproving glare at me. But it was short lived, as she noticed who we had brought with her, and that brought a rapid fire burst of emotions across her face. She unfolded her arms, took a shaky breath and walked over to where Drusilla was standing in the downpour.

I didn't catch their exchange, but it ended in Willow walking away with a lost look on her face. She brushed passed us and went inside. I turned my attention back to my own farseer.

"Buffy." Alice sighed. "I was so afraid."

"Willow has my boots."

"I noticed that too. I thought you gave them to her."

"That bitch."

"Not my favorite immortal" Alice said.

"Oh damn, another excuse for a shopping trip." I said. Still, words will be had.

"Now you're getting it." She smiled and sighed, her honey eyes sparkling.

"I hope so. When you're strong enough." I said and I pulled her into another hug. "Damn it, you smell so good Alice." I confessed in a whisper. She nuzzled my nose and then kissed me. How anyone can convey so much in a single kiss was beyond me. How anyone like her could feel that way about me? Even more so.

Alice pulled back, and her smile faltered as she too, saw Drusilla. I stepped away, but kept her hand in mine.

"88 years, 8 months, 8 days, 8 hours, 8 seconds" Drusilla smiled. "Ain't that a number? Time for changes they say."

Alice pulled from my grasp, stepping out into the rain. I moved to her, but Edward stopped me. Despite the fear in me, I trusted him now. I watched as Alice walked shakily across to Drusilla. I couldn't read if she was scared, or cautious or unsure what to do. Drusilla just grinned and dipped her head forward, her red eyes locked on Alices. Lightning crashed overhead.

"Drusilla." Alice said.

"Little Mary" Drusilla said.

Foreseer be damned, I swear Drusilla was just as surprised as me by the sudden and full embrace Alice pulled her into.

"Thank you." Alice said.

"Everyone's all out their cages 'cept me" Drusilla replied.

I watched the vampires hold each other for the longest time, still as stone, as rain fell about them in the darkness.

And I realised it had been eighty eight years and eight months, eight days and eight hours since Drusilla had set Alice free.

…

Jane somehow seemed ridiculously out of place wearing a black blouse and slacks, and it really emphasized her youthful appearance. She didn't seem old enough to get into a nightclub, let alone to be commanding a deadly vampire strike force. I conjured a picture of the ancient, terrifying robed evil doll of pain I had fought back in Volterra, because I knew what she really was… but somehow it didn't want to stick, and that made me feel off guard.

Still, the upright manner in which she sat at the kitchen bar was regal, and she was flanked by a steel faced, still robed Jasper, who stood late some royal guard. I nodded to her as I entered the room, arm in arm with Alice.

"Any word from Volterra?" I said. Jane looked at me coldly. "See your face is getting a bit better. You're welcome, by the way."

Jane blinked and pursed her lips. She huffed.

"We need to work together on this one Jane. We are all stronger together."

"The Tribunal are unavailable at this time." She sighed then sourly added. "They are on the move. The witch has them hiding too."

"The witch is Diana Cronquist. Remember her?" I said. Jane seemed incredulous for a moment, her red eyes flicking back and forth as she processed this.

"Oh." Was all she said.

"Diana is hell bent on wiping us all out. She has The Glove of Mhynegon and Faith, one of the two Slayers."

"Two slayers?"

"Oh, you don't know?" I said. "Well, that is a surprise. I though you lot watched The Watchers."

"We do. We did. The Slayer is in Cleveland."

"Kennedy." I said, to her surprise. "sorry, but she died a few days ago, a new girl out there got promoted. Faith is Slayer numero dos, and she is not playing for The Watchers."

I sat down at the table, guiding Alice to sit to my right. She tiredly rested her head on my shoulder, and hooked her arms around my waist. It felt so good to hold her again, but her weakness made me feel an alternating mix of ashamed of myself, proud of her and scared for her safety.

"Also did you know the Mayor of Sunnydale isn't human? He has vampires working for him. Aurelian. Apparently a new master has taken control."

Jane shook her head and let out a clipped frustrated huff.

Carlisle and Esme entered the kitchen arm in arm, Veronica following behind. Esme sat opposite Alice and I, Carlisle stood behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder, which she had her fingers intertwined with. Veronica parked her butt on the table itself.

Alice lifted her head.

"Veronica got here about two hours ago. She said that the coven in New Orleans was wiped out yesterday."

"Oh boy, big time." Veronica said. "Just one immortal made it out. Jesse. She is gonna lay low with The Egyptian coven."

"Explains the no show in Sunnydale. Are Faith and Diana still there?" I said. Alice shook her head.

Willow appeared like a storm cloud at the threshold to the kitchen. She leaned against the wall sulking. I turned my attention back to the Volturi Guard leader.

"Jane. Diana's sister, did she survive the change?" I said. Jane looked at me blankly for a minute, which I took to mean she had no idea who I was talking about, but then her eyes became unfocused and she shook herself back to the present.

"Karin, your childe." Jane said, I flinched even though it wasn't said as anything but a fact. And it was a fact. Karin was my childe. Jane became unfocused again and numbly said "she did."

"Jane, where is she?"

"Karin joined the guard. She was in Alec's strikeforce." Jane said.

My heart sank. I realized then a deeper part of me really wanted to meet the immortal girl I had created. Perhaps it was the bond between sire and childe that I had been unaware of, closed off from, but at the news I felt a sickly sense of loss starting to seep into my chest. I glanced at Willow, who was looking at me with a sadness in her eyes. She glanced away, let out a breath and rubbed at her cheek.

"This is pointless," Jasper said, "We need to spread out, we are just sitting ducks here."

"Is there any way Diana can know this location?" I said. Jane sucked in a breath, her eyes wide.

"Demetri. I saw it. She took his gift."

"Hooo boy." Veronica said. "That's not good." She put words on what the others where expressing with their body language.

"How so?" I said, clueless.

"Demetri is…" Jane started to say, then flinched. "Demetri was, a tracker. He could track anyone, anywhere, just by the… how would you say… the flavor … the tenor of someone's mind."

"If he met you, he could find you." Veronica added, but behind the chipper delivery, she looked sad. "M'gonna miss the handsome old lug." It was then I noticed Veronica had shed her contact lenses. To my disappointment, I must admit, her pupils were bright crimson. Which seemed ridiculous considering how many in the room shared the crimson hue.

"What's his range?" I said.

"Anywhere." Alice said flatly from my shoulder.

"But," Carlisle said "we don't know if this Diana can harness such an abstract power yet, or, if Demetri's gift contained the tenors of minds he had met. Perhaps she can only track minds she encountered after she stole the power… there are a lot of factors."

"We can't risk it." Jane said. " We have to assume the worst possible combination. Assume she can track us here."

"If that's the case, she could be heading here right now." Jasper said. "We have no powers, most of us are still wounded. Eric cannot be moved. We need reinforcements!"

"This is it." Jane said. "Don't you see? The Volturi Tribunal have abandoned us."

"Then it's over." Jasper said, throwing his hands up. "It's over!"

"Jasper." Jane said firmly.

"We cannot fight! Not a Slayer! Not like this, let alone that witch."

"Buffy can." Esme said.

"Her?" Jasper laughed darkly. "That little dyke newborn? What can she do?"

"Well for starters," I hummed, "I can kick your ass so hard you choke on it."

The enranged vampire stepped forward, fangs flashing in the harsh electric light.

"Insolent little..."

"Jasper. Enough!" Jane said. "As much as it pains me to say, Esme is right. Buffy is the strongest of us all. She was The Slayer even before she became an immortal. And…" Janes eyes flicked back to mine, "she is the only one who ever resisted my powers. If anyone stands a chance, it is her. Now back off and shut the hell up before I tear out your throat myself."

Jasper balked, but fell silent. His beady red eyes burned at me.

"So I am the last line of defense? Gee, no pressure." I said, and cleared my throat. Alice's hand slid into mine and squeezed.

Carlisle then said "Buffy is not alone. Let us not forget Alice, Edward, Esme, Veronica, Drusilla and Tara also have powerful gifts."

"Tara?" I said. "What can she do?"

"Vanish, apparently." Willow quipped from where she lurked. "I haven't seen the little bitch all night."

"Oh crap." I said.


	31. To The Wolves

Chapter 30

To The Wolves

The lightning crashed down onto the ridge as I sprinted through the storm as fast as my supernatural body could carry me. The rain struck my face hard as I pumped my legs at inhuman speeds, all the while looking, looking- a footprint, a branch broken, something, anything.

No one had seen Tara since sundown, three hours prior. Any hope of catching her trail was washed away with the deluge. Even Emmett couldn't find it. And so we did the only thing we could. We split up to cover our lands. And it was only just sinking in just how much land we had. And what was worse, how much land bordered onto it.

Tara was quiet, meek, always alone, always off to one side. For whatever reason Willow hated her. To the Volturi she was too lowly to speak to. To our family, the least problematic of the survivors. It was no wonder that nobody paid attention to her. It's always the quiet ones you gotta watch.

The lightning struck again to the forest to my left with a deafening whip snap, charging the air through which I streaked, and blasting my nostrils with ozone.

I was close to the western boundary, familiar ground for me, as Alice had taught me the boundaries well. This was where Willow and I had hunted. Where I had seen the wolf. The idea of Tara entering Quileute lands terrified me, but not as much as if she had gone back the other way, to town. Edward had taken a car to cover that option, he would be able to see her thoughts or the thoughts of others.

As I hit the river's edge, I slowed enough to scan the banks for any sign of Tara's passing. I wasn't a seasoned tracker, not by a long shot, but the rain thwarted the subtler signs anyway. Unless she had left anything short of a body print, I would probably miss it. I growled.

I decided on a new plan. I would head for the highest ridge on our side. Find the best vantage point I could, and rely on my eyesight to find her.

And so it was that, twenty minutes later, I found myself halfway up the sheer rock face of a natural tower in the middle of a thunderstorm, wondering just how conductive vampires where. The climb was easy enough, my fists punched holes in the water streaming basalt and I somehow managed to coax my claws out to anchor me in place.

I had to say, terror aside, the view was breathtaking.

I saw the wolves first. Three far to the south west, racing towards the boundary. Then, another group, four this time, directly under me to the west of the river. The two groups were converging. And I think I knew where. My eyes scanned the forest canopy for gaps along the path, I saw a faint white streak of something moving inhumanly fast. If it was Tara, the wolves where hot on her heels.

Locking one claw in place, I pulled out the small, bright orange flare gun from where I had it jammed in my pants. I had never fired one, but Rosalie had insisted I was 'just being a big baby' and 'oh, keep your eyes shut when you first squeeze the trigger, trust me.'

Assuming it would arc, I aimed it for where I thought the wolves would intersect, and did exactly as Rosalie told me. I squeezed the plastic trigger and counted to three before opening one eye a crack. Sure enough, the pink glow of the projectile was headed in the right direction.

They would be coming. But I had to get down there, fast. I tossed the pistol, watching it tumble down into the dark expanse below. Yeaaah, bad idea.

Still...

I let go. Dropping back down to the last outcrop, some twenty feet below. From there, I picked another ledge to drop to, then another. The impacts bone shaking, the fall gut wrenching, but I knew my limits, and I had no time for comfortable landings.

On the last drop I hit the forest floor hard, rolling to break my fall and came up sprinting. I hammered my legs as hard as I could, which proved difficult in muddy banks, so I curved away from the river, where the land was firmer. That helped, and I gained speed on the wolves.

As I got to the grove of Hemlocks where the river was wildest, I caught up to the wolf pack running along the banks. The rear most wolf, silvery grey noticed me, slowing to flick black glances to me. Then another wolf dropped back, the two keeping pace with me. The river between us was surging and wild with the storm waters.

I had to get there first, so I dug deeper into my resources and pushed harder, so much so that I quickly lost them.

My body ached from the climb already, and I knew I had to stop soon, or else my hunger would be too much. I had to stay focused. I had to stay in control.

As I reached the ford, which was lit by the werie pink glow of my flare, Tara had just managed to get to the other side. She was exhausted, soaked and terrified. She noticed me and her eyes lit up with hope. She gathered the last of her strength and sprinted, leaping the roaring river. She didn't quite clear it, splashing down hard in a rocky shallows where a boulder gave some shelter from the churning white waters.

I rushed to her as she clambered up the bank. It was then I noticed all the blood. She stank of it. Human. I growled and and seizing her dress by the shoulders, slamming her against a Hemlock tree.

"What did you do?" I yelled to get above the roar of the rain and the river. "What did you do?"

Tara shook her head confused by my reaction. She turned to look in horror as three giant wolves on river banks, not twenty meters from us. Seeing me slamming Tara against the tree must have given them pause, or perhaps it was the rapids. Either way, I seized the opportunity.

"Wait!" I yelled at them, extending one hand out. "Do not cross the boundary. Do not break the treaty!"

The wolves hovered at the banks, snarling and roaring. One of them dared the rapid waters, but slipped and fell, it scrambled back, uncertain.

"What are you doing?" Tara said. "We must go before they can find another way."

I looked and saw three more great wolves reached the bank.

"No. We are not going anywhere! You broke your word Tara. Who? Who did you kill?"

"Let go of me!" Tara growled.

She looked back in fear as such a mighty howl echoed across the river that I felt it vibrating through me. Then… oh… another four wolves appeared. I had never seen so many, even when I ran with them.

This threw me for a moment, and Tara lashed out and struck me hard across the jaw. She tried to make a break for it. I seized her again by the back of her corset. She spun and glared at in a rage.

"Sleep!" She growled, and I staggered for a moment as my muscles relaxed slightly. Tara looked confused by this. "Sleep!" She commanded. So much for her gift.

My kick sent her flying back into the river, she smashed headfirst into tumbled smooth stones and tombstoned down into the water. I didn't hear the crack, as a peal of thunder rolled over us at that moment.

Tara tried to rise once more, claws out. I punched her face and she staggered back into the shallows. I leapt and brought my bodyweight down in a hammer fist. This time, she went limp under the impact of my blow, dropping her hard into the water. She was face down, motionless.

"You sleep." I said. I had the urge to lift her to the bank to stop her from drowning, but realised the absurdity of that idea and just left her.

Carlisle arrived at my side in a blur. Rosalie a second later. Then Emmett and Willow. The wolves began to growl and bark, agitated by the shift in numbers.

One of the wolves, a powerful beast with black fur stepped to the fore of the group. I recognized it as the black one that had watched Willow and I.

With a hideous growl, he shifted, and there stood a tall muscular boy with dark eyes and short cropped hair. The rain hissed and boiled against his broad body. He wore a tattoo like Leahs, of course. I felt guilt boiling within me but stamped it down- I would face Leah soon, I had bigger problems right now.

"Murderers!" The boy yelled, his voice filled with grief "you will all pay for this. This is war. You hear me cold ones? This is war!"

"What happened?" Carlisle said to me.

"Tara killed someone. She fed. The blood was all over her." I said. I grabbed the unconscious girl and tossed her limp body onto the riverbank. Only then did I realize I still had the locust wood stake Alice had given me in my boot. I could feel it pressing against my shin. I felt myself making an inhuman rumbling in my throat and chest at the thought of ramming it into her, watching her turn to grey mud before my eyes.

"Listen, Jacob. This cold one is not of our coven, she acted alone, and will answer for her crime."

"Crime? She killed Emily." He snarled. "She killed Emily! I will tear her apart for what she did. I will tear all of you apart!"

"Jacob. She will be punished. Justice will be done- of that have no doubt. But our family have not broken the treaty between our people. Jacob, please listen to reason. Assemble the elders."

Jacob went to say something but stopped, tipping his head to the side, the wolves were communicating. He then scanned the gathered vampires and fixed his eyes on me.

"Buffy?" He said.

"Yes. I am Buffy. Buffy Swan, Charlie's daughter."

He looked at me with a curious expression. It started as angry and confused, then sort of 'angry and worried'. It settled back to just plain angry.

"Jacob, you where at the fire when Leah brought me. You know who and what I am. Death's Gift. Listen to me. I have the one to killed Emily. She isn't going anywhere. Call Sue Clearwater. Let's sort this out without anyone else getting hurt."

The boy glared at me as he considered, rubbing his hands through his wet spikey hair. He snarled and flicked his head back to the Wolf Pack. Two of the wolves broke away, and dissapeared into the darkness.

"Thank you." Carlisle said.

...

It was a little past two in the morning when the jeep arrived at the meeting place. It was at a shallows I had only passed by once, half a mile south of where I caught Tara. Here the river forked, the main body turning west into the Quileute lands, whilst this fork became shallower as it wound through large plateaus of flat dark stone.

This brought both parties uncomfortably close for my liking.

The rain had died away to all but a light drizzle, but the gathered wolves still steamed, giving them a hell hound like look. I couldn't help but remember Leah's heat, the sweat of my mortal body as she pressed hers to mine. And then the taste of her came to mind, and her kiss. I bit my lip and tried to banish the images.

The moon was a shade past full, so bright I could see clear as day.

On the Quileute side, I counted fourteen wolves ranging from huge to, like, god, seriously huge.

Our side had grown too. Edward, Jessica and Esme where waiting for us when we arrived, of our Coven, only Alice was absent. I wasn't sure if that gave me comfort or distress. Willow had joined us too, as had Jane, who was flanked by Jasper and Santiago. Jasper eyed me from under his hood. I shook my head, my look warning him to stay cool.

Sue Clearwater exited the Jeep, along with a solid looking gentleman, who held the body of a young girl. I sighed, and hoisted Tara up to her feet. She growled, but she was weak, and now knew to fear me.

Sue and the man carrying the girl walked across the first stone plane, stepping over the small streams. Carlilse walked out alone. I dragged Tara with me, keeping back so they could talk.

The first thing Carlisle did was check the girl. He shook his head.

"I am sorry Sue, there is a small window where the venom deposit can be sucked out, but it's far too late. She has already begun the change."

"I see a lot of red eyes here Carlisle." Sue said.

"There is a war going on in our society. Many have died. They were wounded, and sought asylum and medical care. I offered to help, on the condition they obeyed the rules of the treaty as guests whilst here."

"But your numbers are growing outside of that as well."

"Yes, as I said over the phone, two of my children have found mates, Sue. We don't plan on expanding past that. We will be eight members. Once the wounded are safely healed, they will leave."

"It's too late. New Wolves are phasing." Sue said. "The pack has more now than ever before in our history. We think they are called to meet the rising threat."

"There is no threat from us, I assure you."

"Really? Tell that to Emily Young here."

"My family are deeply, deeply sorry for what happened Sue. But we have not broken the treaty, Tara here is not a member of our Coven, and her crime is abhorrent to us. As far as I am concerned, she is yours to do with what you will."

"What?" Tara growled. "You… you traitor! You turn your back on one of your own kind?" Tara said. "What kind of master vampire are you?"

Carlisle said "Tara Maclay, you have broken our trust, thrown our hospitality and our care back into our faces, you have risked our entire family and above all, you have taken a human life. A life we have sworn to protect."

"She will rise! She will rise an immortal! I gave her life, not took it! Can't you hear her turning?"

"That was not your intention, you thought only to feed. This was not her choice." Carlisle said.

Tara turned to Jane and said "You represent The Volturi! You are not going to stand for this, surely? The Volturi uphold our laws, you say? I am a daughter of The Master! I am an immortal!"

"No. You are nothing." Jane said. "You should never have been gifted immortality. You are a violation of our law, in both existence and in your actions. I regret sparing you. Let the wolves have her."

Tara backed away from me, from the meeting, stepping onto the damp rocky plinth. The circling wolves closed in around her.

Jane turned and began to walk away from the doomed girl, I fell in step with her, so my back was turned when they began to tear her apart. But I knew the sound of it would stay with me. Her screams pitched up, and then that familiar wail as she crumbled to hot ash.

A silence fell over the gathered.

"Are you satisfied that Justice has been done? That we have held the treaty sacred?"

"That's one murder. What about the other two?"

"What do you mean?"

"These 'mates' your children found, strange how they just so happen to be both Forks girls." She said. "I see you, Jessica Stanley. And I see you Buffy Swan. The treaty is still forfeit, your clan killed two girls in Forks. Rise or not, blood was spilt."

Jessica stepped forward. "With respect, Mrs Clearwater, but that's complete horseshit. For starters, Buffy and I got turned in Italy. And gladly too. You knew I was sick Mrs. Clearwater, when I got desperate I came to La Push for medicine. So you knew. You knew I was going to die. I love Edward Cullen and I wanted to live on, and marry him, and what's wrong with that? I don't regret my choice. Not for a second."

"Really? And I suppose Buffy just happened to make the same decision at the same time? She could not get sick."

"I was The Slayer, Sue. Which is just as terminal. Sooner or later, some vamp gets lucky. I should know, I saw every girl who came before me die in my dreams. I would have been bitten or way worse one of these days. I got to be changed under my terms, by someone who cares for me. And now I choose to live in Forks, in peace, and damn it sue, that's all we want to do. Just live in peace."

"And what about Leah? Did you think of her?"

"Neither of us chose to imprint. Leah didn't. I didn't. It isn't fair. It's horrible for your daughter, I know, and if I could change it, I would in a heartbeat, but it doesn't mean we should all go to war!"

I walked back towards the body of the girl. The wolves growled as I approached. Tara was right, I could sense the change happening within her.

"Sue, Emily is turning. She will rise in two days, and she will be confused and need guidance. We can help her. Give her a home."

"I can't allow that. Sam is imprinted on Emily." She said. "That's two of the wolf pack bound to cold ones."

"Then for everyone' sakes we need to learn how to break the imprint magicks when the bond is unwelcome. It isn't fair on anyone." I said. "We all deserve a choice as to who we are bound to. We should work together Sue. Find a solution."

"I can do it." Willow said with a shrug. "I mean, I could look into it, at least. My connection to the magicks may be gone, but my knowledge of the arcane hasn't. All spells woven can be unravelled. The question is which metaphysical thread you have to tug on, and how hard." She said.

"You honestly think you can save Leah?" Sue said.

"Yeah. That is, if I can stay. I'm not sure how I fit into all this treaty stuff. Plus, I kinda have to be able, you know, go on your land to do this. Without that happening " she pointed to the grey muddy outline that was Tara.

"Willow, we cannot have a repeat of Tara's crime. If you stay, can you live by our ways?" Carlisle said.

"She can" Esme said. Willow seemed surprised by her coming to her defense.

"I believe so too." Edward said. Carlisle looked to me and I nodded. Willow tilted her head, a strange look on her face. I think I knew what she was feeling.

Sue looked down on the shuddering body of Emily. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Take Emily's body. The elder council will meet regarding Willow. Your guests must go as soon as they are recovered. You understand, they so much as harm anyone else Carlisle…"

"You have my word." Carlisle said. "Thank you Sue. I am going to cross the boundary to collect Emily."

He walked slowly to where Emily's body lay. The wolves growled as he approached. I took a breath and held it, willing myself to stay calm, to not tense for battle. Carlisle squatted beside Emily, looking her over. He then carefully folded her arms in such a way as to trap them safely against her body, and lifted her up.

Slowly turning, he carried her back to our side.

"We will look after her Sue." I said. "in the meantime, if you think Leah is ready to know what I am, I want to see her. At least to apologize."

Sue stared at me, as if she were scrutinizing every detail of my features. Horrified? Mesmerized? Looking for insincerity? I don't know. She shook her head, letting out a sigh.

"Let me think on it."

I nodded. And with that, followed my kind as they walked off into the darkness.


	32. Laid To Rest

Chapter 31

Laid to Rest

There had been little conversation among the vampires on our walk back to the house, nothing I found of note at least, except perhaps for an exchange between Jane and Carlisle.

"I find this all distasteful Carlisle. She was not selected for immortality. How do you know she is worthy? She should be destroyed."

"Emily may prove that she is worthy." Carlisle said. "We do not know her yet."

"Our gift should not be given so freely. And certainly not as a bargaining chip with moon children."

"You have fought moon children Jane, hunted them to the brink of extinction. You should recognise that The Quileute wolves are completely different. We have no reason to extend our feud with the moon children to them. They do not compete with us for food, they are bound by magicks to keep our world secret, they remain in control of their minds in wolf form, and their numbers are limited. They seek only to protect their people Jane."

"As do I, Carlisle." Jane said, and the two leaders fell back into silence.

Dawn would be coming soon. The remaining survivors must have sensed this and were already in the cellar by the time we reached home. Jane, Jasper and Santiago made a beeline for it as soon as we arrived.

Carlisle took Emily's body down to the clinic. At this rate, I wondered if Esme would ever get a chance to make my little "magical corner of the world" happen. Still, that made me realize that something about the whole house had changed for me since my return to Sunnydale. Coming home to it had felt exactly like that… coming home.

Drusilla was perched like a raven on the bannister of the great staircase. She had her knees drawn up to her chin, fingers and toes in a little white row.

"This little piggy went to market." she said as I passed by.

"I swear to god Dru, you so much as look sideways at a mortal while you are here…"

"Cross my heart and hope to die, besides..." She said tilting her head to the side so she could look at my mouth. "Your little lips are naughtier than mine."

She smirked and sliding off the bannister, dropping out of my sight and down to the room below. I didn't have the energy or patience for her games right now, so I climbed the few remaining stairs and made my way down the hall to Alice's room.

This time it was definitely Alice sitting at the drawing table. She gave me a warm smile and a warmer kiss.

"Need an update?" I said.

"Tara's destroyed. A Makah girl is turning. And Willow's joining our coven." Alice said, the last bit through gritted teeth.

"That's my girl." I said, planting a kiss on her head before I went to find a new outfit. I stripped off my soaked and filthy clothes, discarded them into the hamper, and started rummaging in the bags.

"Did she steal anything else?" Alice said.

"Play nice. She may be able to break the imprinting magic. Leah needs her help."

"Ah, my other most favorite-est person in the whole wide world." Alice said. "Who you decided on seeing soon."

I slipped on my black leather pants and followed it with a big, soft warm white turtleneck sweater. On some level I knew the sweater didn't feel any different to being halfway up a cliff in a rainstorm, but I guess psychologically I felt like the sweater was cozy warm after the night I had. Brains are weird. I ran with it.

Speaking of which, I had to admit I was growing a little tired of Alice's insecurity. It felt strange coming from someone who could literally see what path my decisions would take. Had I not decided to be with Alice? Despite my attraction to Leah and to Willow, I had no plans on acting on those desire.

"So, Alice, gotta ask... why all the jealousy?" I said, towling myself down. "Leah and I dated for like, roughly a day. You know, I think I prefer my little monsters with golden eyes, not green."

"It's just…" she let out a huff and shrugged "it's hard to explain. You have to understand, time is… a little disjointed for me. I have had visions of you… of us… since the 1920s."

It clicked for me then. I walked over and perched myself on the windowsill next to her.

"It feels like I cheated on you. Or that she stole me from you?"

Alice thought about it and finally gave a shrug. "It's silly."

"No, it's not. I think I get it. That's your experience. You spent your life experiencing that we where a thing, and then boomf! I am with Leah. That's gotta hurt."

Alice nodded and sighed. I took her hand in mine.

"Best I can offer? Actual lived experiences of us together for the foreseeable." I said and then added, "In glorious, guilt-free, chronological order."

She chuckled and leaned onto me, folding her arms over my lap and resting her head upon them. It gave me the opportunity to stroke my hand through her spikey raven locks.

"Is this what bone tired feels like?" She said. "I don't remember."

"Maybe. It bothers me you are taking so long to recover."

"Carlisle said something about our own blood is part of what absorbs the life force from that of our prey. When you drank from me, you took some of my blood. It takes time for me to restore that, and whilst it is low, I won't absorb as much from my prey."

I kissed the crown of her head. In apology, in sympathy, in thanks.

Alice lifted her eyes to mine and gave me a smile so beautiful that, had I not already been blazing with love for her, it would have surely ignited it. I simply adored her elfin face, the little upturn of her nose, her plum cheeks, the dimples that formed in the long grooves either side of her mouth when she smiled. How could anyone improve on such a face? It felt made from all the things I found adorable. And I lately I had had enough of wicked smiles: of Drusilla's, of Willow's, of Faith's; this smile held none of that. It was a smile of pure love.

Sensing her need to be held, I lifted Alice into my lap and wrapped her up in my arms.

"I want this forever." I whispered. "Promise me this is forever."

Alice tightened the embrace and hummed. But she said nothing, and we spent the morning like this together in silence.

…

Sometime after midday, the family gathered in the shaded grove east of the great lake. It wasn't planned, as far as I could tell. We just sort of gravitated together. At first, Jessica and Edward, Alice and I. Then Esme, a little later Carlisle. Rosalie and Emmett where the last to arrive, fresh from their hunt, both carrying carcasses for our guests.

We had all had our fill of the chaos, and the unfamiliarity that had invaded our life. As new a member of this family as I was, I felt something close to ease being just among them. Of course, I couldn't quite relax knowing the threat that was out there.

Esme and Rosalie had taken the early morning preparing Emily's body for her awakening. Their account of the damage left by Tara's attack made me fume. It had been savage, merciless and worst of all, the evidence suggested that the torture had lasted for an extended period. The poor girl had suffered a dislocated shoulder, fingers and wrist, multiple breaks to her legs, numerous bites and had most of her ribcage collapsed. I had seen many grisly things in my short life, caused a few of them myself, but what I heard sealed my feelings on Tara's demise. If anything, it was far too quick.

Emily's body had been bathed and dressed. At 5'6", she was taller and broader than Alice, Esme and I, but thankfully Rosalie's statuesque frame meant Emily had a simple red dress to wake in. Still, I felt it wrong that she would rise in something unfamiliar. I decided to make some arrangements to collect some of her clothes.

I was sitting against to a tree, with Alice sat between my legs. I had my arms protectively around her small, frail frame, our arms tangled together. I realised that we were all holding on to our partners in a similar manner, and thought better not to draw attention to it, for I guess we all needed to take what comfort we could, while we could. Still, I could tell we all felt the anxiety of impending doom.

I tried my best not to look at Emmett and Rosalie. I felt sick at the idea of us keeping from them Alices vision of their imminent deaths, but that knowledge would harm more than it would help. If I was going to die, I wouldn't want to know.

"Has Drusilla seen anything useful in regards to Diana or Faith?" Carlisle said, after a notably long silence had fallen on the family.

"Probably." Jessica said. She was laying flat on the grass to our left, head in Edwards lap. "But it's more a case of 'have we deciphered anything that she says she has seen.' She is all like 'three little pigs' and shi..." Jessica stopped and threw her hands up. "Oh, right. I just got the Tara reference. See what I mean?"

"Why can't Alice see where she is going?" Emmett said.

"If Faith is like Buffy, she probably is blocking my visions. Or Diana has that power too."

"Plus you two are sandwiched together again, Buffy is probably blocking you. That's not good." Rosalie said. I felt Alice tighten her grip on my hands.

"The three that see' thing confuses me. Buffy cannot see the future now, can she?" Edward said.

"I can, but I have to be dreaming." I said. "Apparently I can still tap into whatever Slayer-y thing gives us that power."

"So we grab a big rock. Knock Buffy out." Rosalie says. "Easy."

"Babe, not cool." Emmett said, "Besides, Buffy needs to be ready to fight."

Carlilse said "A low, and I mean very low dose of Irkalla could induce a-"

"I was afraid you would say that." I sighed. Edward shook his head.

"Drusilla showed me the three of you all together, in a circle, in a dark place."

"We all go into The Irkalla?" Alice said. "But Buffy and I were not together last time. Our nightmares are not linked."

"Actually, I am pretty sure Dru got inside mine." I said. "Maybe she can do some sort of linky thing? She mentioned that you were in dreams, but it was 'nightmares for her and I'."

"She and I" Rosalie said.

"Is it worth the risk?" Esme said. "Alice is still very weak."

"I'll take that risk." Alice said. "Diana and Faith have to be stopped, or we could all die."

"Hey, strange thought" Jessica said. "What if the Deputy Mayor wanted Alice not to steal her power, but to, like, stop a prophecy being fulfilled."

"Killing any of us would do that."

"Or he wanted it to happen." Jessica shrugged. "Either way, maybe ya think we should find out what the prophecy is first? Always pays to read the instructions, my dad always said."

"Oooh, oooh, Willow is totally like, magick research girl." I said "We should get her on it."

Jessica placed her palm on the floor and, taking her full bodyweight upon it, gracefully spun her legs over her head to a standing position. She was getting used to her body now, revelling in it, and I often saw her coming up with these unusual movements. It reminded me that my body had changed too, that my training, which had been limited to my Slayer body, now had new boundaries in which to grow. I should take time to explore. And train. I hadn't trained since Volterra.

"Welp, I will give evil red my PC and run a cable down to the cellar. At least it will stop her complaining about being bored." Jessica said, heading towards the house. "But she needs to get her own PC if she is gonna stay."

"And her own boots" I mumbled.

...

As she couldn't hunt, I shared one of the deer that Rosalie and Emmett had brought with Alice. As greedily as she drank, she seemed no more refreshed by it. She lay in the grass after, seemingly more exhausted than drunk, and she hummed a tune from a time long before mine.

I left her side shortly after our meal. Rosalie was right, not about the big rock, but that I had to keep some distance from Alice to allow for her visions. I paced about the house, looking for something to put my mind at ease. The magazines too trivial, the books too dense. For some reason I couldn't fathom, perhaps morbid curiosity, I found myself in the room with the body of Emily Young.

She had long black hair with bangs, washed and brushed neatly. She was, I would guess, in her early twenties. She seemed physically fit, with strong shoulders and firmly muscled limbs. She fell short of Rosalie's amazonian stature and was less imposing or powerful as Leah, but she had qualities of both.

Looking at her face, the most obvious feature was a series of deep, ragged scars that ran all the way down entire right side. It reminded me of lightning. I realised the scars where not wounds inflicted by Tara as I had first thought, they were perhaps a year older. So, Emily Young had known tragedy and pain before her end. Still, if she had lived through that, perhaps she already posessed the strength that she would need to move past what Tara had done to her. At least, I hoped she could.

I tried to look past the scars to form a picture of the girl that existed before them. I knew as the change took her, the scars would vanish away, replaced by skin seemingly untouched by the cruel realities of the world. I think I could see where the change would take her. I had known enough immortals by now.

There was something familiar to me in the shape of her face and set of her jaw. Despite Leah being Quilute and Emily being Makah, I wondered if they where perhaps related. Where they differed was Emily's longer, stronger nose and shorter brow, which gave her a more moon shaped face to Leahs. Past that I couldn't compare, because death changes you.

Emily was a corpse.

In my memory, Leah was burning hot with life.

I sat vigil on the chair beside her and thought about the first night Merrick had taken me to the graveyard. How I sat impatiently for hours, waiting for this so-called vampire to rise. Bored and unfocused, I hadn't noticed the girl rise behind me, the first immortal I would fight. The first I would slay.

How I had changed so much since then.

And even though I knew Emily wouldn't rise until tomorrow night, I sat with her in the still afternoon.

I wondered what Karin saw when she first opened her eyes.


	33. Let The Right One In

Chapter 32

Let the right one in

It had begun to snow as I walked down the street towards the house that never changed. Except, to my surprise, it had. I had only seen it during the summer months on my yearly visits, so the frost that clung to the walls gave it a strikingly different look to my transformed eyes. But that wasn't what struck me. The path from the doorway to the old brick drive had greeted me each morning with deep muddy puddles. In my absence, it had all been filled in with grey stones. The eves, door frame and window sills had all been repaired and painted a warm grey. I could also see that the lace curtains which had yellowed with age had all been bleached or perhaps replaced.

My first thought was that Charlie had sold the house, which I quickly dismissed as the cruiser was still sitting on the brick driveway. My lips twitched into a smile as I noticed my truck was still there, wrapped in a protective tarpaulin held in place with bungee cords and bricks.

I pressed my hand to the exposed red metal. It seemed strangely surreal to me now, as if it had been lifetimes since that day I had arrived back in Forks to start my life anew. My hand against the frosty metal reminded me of the day I leapt to protect Alice from the truck. That would have been the first time we touched, and it amuses me our relationship had started at a moment of disaster, a moment of death.

I had died then too. After the truck crash, I flatlined at the hospital. Carlisle had realized I was The Slayer when he noticed the speed at which my wounds where healing. He could have so easily just let me slip away, let me die to protect the family. He chose to revive me.

Two deaths. Two Slayers.

Kendra had been called when I sacrificed myself to save Alice. From her death came Kennedy, who passes the torch to the ginger haired girl.

Faith was called when I abandoned my calling and let myself be turned.

As I snatched my pale, dead hand away from the metal, the front door of the house opened.

"Still runs." Charlie said, leaning against the frame with his hands in his pockets. "Been giving it a spin every couple of months." I smiled and stepped away from the truck, looking it over.

"Seems a waste just sat here. You should sell it." I said.

"Doesn't belong to me." He said with a shrug.

"Hey dad." I said. I swear, he actually broke out into a smile, just for a moment, which of course quickly vanished into an awkward search for words. My habitual defense from awkwardness with Charlie was to divert any conversation that required expressing actual feelings to something mundane. I glanced at the snowflakes fluttering gently down and considered the weather as an option. However, what I settled on was:

"I'm a vampire."

Charlie slowly chewed his lip as he considered this. He looked up at the eves, then down at the newly repaired pathway, all the while his fingers gently tapping at his utility belt. Slowly, surely, he began to nod.

"S'why I don't feel the cold. Why my breath doesn't fog. Why my eyes are no longer hazel."

"Okay." He said, after another pause, mostly to himself.

"I fell in love with a vampire. I made her turn me so we could be together. She bit me. It hurt. A lot. And…" I shrugged, "eventually I died, slowly and painfully over two days as my body changed."

Charlie looked away, hands on hips, pulling in a long, slow breath.

"The hunger? It never really goes away. I can just dull it. I hunt animals up in the mountains. I can outrun anything, take down anything with my bare hands and with my teeth. You name it... deer… bears… cougars… they don't stand a chance against me. I rip them apart like tissue paper, and I drink their blood til they are dry."

"Buffy…"

"Dad. This is what I am."

Charlie nodded again, crossing his arms and leaning back against the doorframe.

"The Cullens too?"

"And Jessica Stanley."

"Thought she died a while back, not long after her mom."

"Well, technically, she did. We're not alive. Not really. I don't have a heartbeat. I don't need to breathe. I can't get sick, or sleep or cry. I will never age, and I will never die."

"Never?"

"Dad, my girlfriend remembers when jazz was the wild new craze sweeping the nation. Hell, I know a girl who is over a thousand years old and she would still totally get carded buying alcohol."

Charlie's blank expression meant his mind was whirring, or perhaps all the jigsaw pieces where in place and he was just checking all the evidence. My dad. Ever the cop.

Finally, Charlie let out a breath that fell somewhere close to laugh. He stepped back from the door. He looked at me then, his brown eyes softened.

"Can you still drink coffee?"

"Happy to sit and watch you drink one.

…

When Sue Clearwater let herself in an hour or so later, and found Charlie and I sitting at the old oak table, her reaction was to freeze on the spot.

"Hey Sue." I said, the warmth in my voice was genuine. She nodded cautiously and hung up her winter jacket on the peg next to Charlies.

"Still some coffee left." Charlie said. "Want a cup?" She shook her head, but picked up the pot anyway.

"Not if you made it. I will make us a fresh pot that will actually taste of coffee." She said and set about the task with great familiarity.

I recognised now that the many small improvements to the house was her hand at work. I guessed that Sue had painted over Joyce's gaudy sunshine yellow cabinets with the leftover paint from my room. In light of recent events, I found that improvement the most refreshing.

I could smell the fear in her as she set about her work- the exciting spice it added to her already delicious scent that made my mouth water. I think her calmness came from a stoic sort of resignation. She knew well from the stories what A Cold One like me could do. How powerless either of them were to stop me.

I swallowed back my saliva and focused on the mantelpiece. Joyce had been all but been erased there too, just one photo of her remained, a tired new mother and her awkward husband, clutching their little baby.

"Sue" I said, "Emily's gonna rise tomorrow night. It's gonna be hard on her. I wondered if we could arrange for some of her clothes, maybe some personal things of hers? Something that she can take comfort in."

Sue shot a nervous glance at Charlie.

"If you call ahead," Charlie said, "I could swing by the reservation and collect them. Saves any treaty issues."

Hearing this Sue took a deep breath and pressed herself back against the kitchen bench to regard Charlie and then I.

"Okay." She said. "That would be better for her, wouldn't it?"

To my amusement, she snatched the mug from Charlie's hand. "Stop drinking that slop, you will take the enamel off your teeth." She said.

…

Charlie dropped over the box of her belongings the next day, during daylight as I requested. I took it upon myself alone to change Emily into what Sue has said where her favorite clothes, which consisted of a burgundy long sleeve top and jeans with a necklace of long beads.

I arranged the few belongings by the bedside table. There was a picture in a frame, taken at what looked to me to be La Push beach. It showed her laying back against a powerful young man, a full head taller than her. It was little surprise to me that he had a wolf pack tattoo. He was captured midway through a laugh, and Emily's scarred face was turned towards him into an easy, loving smile.

"Emily of New Moon, waiting for The Flash." Drusilla says from the doorway, startling me. I found it frustrating that of all those that dwelt in the house, that the only one who could sneak up on me was Drusilla. I growled.

"Go away Dru. I don't want her waking up to The Wind Woman."

She seemed pleased that I got her reference, but her face fell and she shook her head as if we had made a terrible mistake.

"This one ain't no orphan though. Is she?" She said. Her sly smile returned, as she slowly craned her long neck to face me. I glared into her hypnotic gaze unwaveringly.

"Did you know? We share the same birthday you and I." She said. She clucked her tongue, smiled again, then silently slid out the room like a shadow retreating.

"He knows it is time to gather his feathers, all up off the floor, stick 'em back on." She called out, from down the hall. "My job's done."

I sighed, and returned to my vigil.

…

Even during my time as a Slayer, I had never witnessed a turning take place.

Emily changed in minute degrees at first, so subtle I felt I was imagining it. But as the hours passed, and the venom spread, consuming and rewriting her body, the change accelerated exponentially.

I heard sounds within her too, the faint squealing of broken bones threading back together, hissing of her stomach as it consumes itself, the grind of her teeth as they shifted in her jaws With sudden crack-crack-crack her ruined legs set and pulled themselves taut. Her flattened chest rose, as if she took a breath, and with a faint slithering crystalline sound, her ribs fused once more.

Outside the snow was falling thicker and faster, gathering on the cedars, shimmering and sparkling as the last beams of day's grace faded. The sun would grow bloody soon as it crawled back over the hills to hide.

Only in the final hour did the change spread to her flesh. At first I noticed patches form, like melting frost that spread and gathered about her skin. I focused in to the leading edge, and there I could see her coppery skin cells shudder and shift, catching the light in a prismatic spray as they bleached and crystalized, becoming smooth like a million tiny pearls.

I watched as the three thick scars on her face began to dissolve into pale buttermilk colored skin.

It was mesmerizing, fascinating, watching the girl die and the vampire emerging. A death butterfly. Alice had watched me change like this. The idea felt magical to me, intimate beyond words. She had been there to witness me meet the juncture between death and eternity.

Some hidden part of me caught the silent sound as the process ended. A call to her kind. The house became silent as death. We could all hear it.

I stood, approaching the cot my breath held.

Emily's red eyes opened.


	34. Crow Call

Chapter 33

Crow Call

In the hours leading up to her waking, I had lived this moment countless times in my imagination, until it had built to an almost feverish pitch and I had to force myself to silence it all or else my head would split open.

I would run it, rerun it, twisting it, turning it, whatever angle I could think to find the questions she would ask. Over and over, until it was a whirling wordstorm.

Imaginary Emily would scream. Imaginary Emily would panic. Imaginary Emily would beg me to destroy her, or be drunk with the wonder of it all. She would fear herself a monster, she would be terrified of her strength… she would ache for tears that would never come.

And yet, as Emily opened her blood red eyes to her new world, I felt woefully unprepared.

She stared at the ceiling for what felt like an eternity. She blinked. She blinked again. Then, slowly, with no hint of emotion on her face, she closed her eyes.

I stood completely still. Statue still. Not a breath passed my lips, not a twitch of my finger. Besides the low little tingle I felt in my spine, I felt timeless.

"It's stopped." She said, and I knew she meant the pain.

"Yes." I said. "It's okay. It's over now. You're safe."

"No. I am not. None of us are." She said in a manner so matter of fact it sent a chill down my spine that set that ignited my body into a deeply unsettling hum.

Emily sat bolt upright, merely folding at the waist like a bear trap. Her face a beastial scowl, sunken eyes in dark sockets, brow ridges so sharp they were like talons tearing out from within.

An instinct came to me, long buried, that screamed at me to attack, to slam my stake into the newborn's chest and send the hellborn beast to dust. It rose within me, but before it reached my muscles shifted into little more than a laugh of bitter irony. A laugh that was cut short when she turned to look at me.

To my horror, the right side of Emily's face seemed to split open, once again ravaged by those scars, but silver now and agonizingly deep. She flinched and pawed at her face.

"She said… she said it would heal." She said, her voice thick with distress. "She swore…"

Emily noticed the mirror then, slid to her feet and stood, overshooting her strength just a little, and I was at her side, steadying her. A clawed hand wrapped over mine.

"She swore!" Emily snatched up the mirror and gazed in horror at the wounds. "Buffy, she swore!"

"You… who? Tara?"

"The crow." Emily said, pulling herself free from my hold. She teetered, striking the wall with her back then froze, glaring into the mirror.

"Emily?" I said.

The vampire laughed darkly and shook her head. Blood red eyes locked on her reflection.

"She lied. Was it all a lie? Did I… was it some sick joke? All of it?"

"Emily, please… talk to me. Let me help…"

"Help? What can you do? Look at me! Is this it? What I am now? Was my duty a lie, the hellmouth?"

"Hellmou… Emily, tell me what you know."

"I want to go home. Oh god, Sam! What have I done?"

"Emily… this was done to you. Tara…"

"Tara is ash. Mud in the stream." Emily snapped. Her lips trembled over cruel, jagged fangs and with a snarl she hurled the mirror across the room, shattering it against the doorframe.

The rage seemed to hiss from her, sinking into the cold waters of sadness, Emily slumped, and slid down the wall.

She licked at dry lips, hot breaths puffing at her cheeks, causing the deep wounds to crackle, making her eye flutter shut with pain. Her eyes darted at the floor, distantly searching through events.

I watched her, feeling helpless. A failure of a midwife, my hopes to do good at this one thing shredded in the jumble of words that slipped from her lips. Crow. Hellmouth. Duty.

But my eyes caught sight of the pitcher I had prepared, and I knew where to begin. I knelt before her, held out the container to her. She ignored me.

"Emily. You know what you are now? What we are?" I said, softly.

"Yes." She said.

"Your throat is burning."

She looked at me then; nodded.

"Everything will be simpler after you drink. One way or another."

She looked at the large white plastic container which I extended to her again. Unmoving. So I made it easier for her still. I took off the lid, the scent of the deer's blood lighting up my own body.

Emily snatched the container and brought it to her lips, her expression changing the moment the life blood flowed over her tongue. Eyes wide but for a moment, before long lashes fluttered shut and a deep growl came from deep within her as she greedily pulled the fluid in.

Sated, she lolled back, a tiny smile forming over her bloodied cupid's bow lips. Then, with a series of wet crunches, her face shifted back to human again. Her shaking fingers found an unblemished cheek, and she met my gaze again with a look of wonder.

"Told you." I said.

...

I didn't have to look for Alice, I just knew wherever I wandered she would be waiting for me. So, as it was ,she was sitting by the lake, just beyond the silent black hulking warbird helicopters, made all the meaner and harder and darker for the gentle soft snow that fell all around them.

Silently, she drew me into an embrace, and I curled up gladly into her. I felt stretched impossibly thin, like exhaustion should be taking me to rest at any moment, but my unnatural body refused to obey. I wanted to sleep, but couldn't. I wanted to cry, but couldn't.

I wanted to run too.

Alice hummed and rocked me, sliding her slender fingers through my hair.

"Need filling in?" I mumbled.

"Emily knew she would be a vampire since she was a child. A crow told her. It came to her throughout her life. It said she would save her people if she became a cold one."

"Being with you is so easy." I hummed. "Weird. But easy." Alice chuckled. I brought her down for deep, welcome kiss.

"Wish I could say the same. But I know that look Buffy. What trouble are you planning now?"

"You know, I was so confused for the longest time. So lost. What was I? Mad. Sane. A slayer. A vampire. Alone, or a part of a family. But I figured it out. underneath it all, I figured out what it is that I am. What I always was. And what I should be. I get it now. I get me now. It's about blood. it all comes down to blood."

"Buffy?"

"I am a warrior, Alice." I said. "A protector. I do what has to be done to keep that which I love safe. And it is blood. You, the coven, and this life? Blood. My blood. Our blood. It's so, so simple."

"Buffy, I..."

"Diana and Faith will be here soon. We must be ready." I said. "I am going to make us as ready as we can be."

"How so?" she said.

"Veronica. Her network. I got her to use it. To call them here."

"Them?"

"Us. Our kind. All of us. Every last immortal she can find."

"You are building an army." Alice said, her eyes wide with fear.

"I am. And I am going to lead it against Diana. It is what I am here for. It is my calling."

"The battle..." Alice said, trembling. She stood and looked out over the lake.

"Alice. It's time now. I know. I know you have been holding something back. Haven't you? Something you have seen"

Alice sighed and shook her head, more in defeat than denial. She looked so small to me now, so fragile. The weakness of my draining her still held her, but it ran deeper, far, far deeper- to a place of true hopelessness and loss that only farseer eyes could touch.

"I saw the battle. It's a violent blur… black bodies in a whirl of ash, fire, blood, snow… death. Wolves, vampires. Rosalie and Emmett die."

"How?"

Alice draws in a deep, shuddering breath and holds it, waiting to mold it into words.

"Alice, please tell me. I need to know. To be prepared so I can save them."

"But you… I don't think you can."

"How do they die, Alice?"

"It's you." She said, her words barely a ghost on her lips. "Buffy... it's you who kills them."

THE END

...

The adventure continues is Summer's Twilight III: Summer's Eclipse.

As the immortals gather in Forks for the final battle against Diana, new alliances must be forged between ancient enemies. But the darkness flows deeper beneath her feet than Buffy knows, and if she does not unlock the secrets of what dwells within The Hellmouth, it will tear apart her family, her allies and her soul.

_From beneath you, it devours_.


End file.
